To not quite see the fuss with Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes?

[weeblueberry]

Virtually everyone has said they cry at the end of this kids book but I bought it to read with the wee one this evening and...nothing. I wasn't quite sure what bit I was supposed to find emotional other than the poor wee bugger who's got sniffles and coughs

Am I just a cold hearted bitch or is there something I'm missing?

*Always not also

Another vote for No Matter What, total sobfest for me and dd. but it's such a gorgeous book....so worth reading

But also by the same author, Where oh where is my baby bear?, it's not even sad but still chokes me up.

What I like about no matter what is that I hadn't considered that my children might think I don't love them just because they are naughty/I am angry. After I read if to them for the first time I felt really glad I'd come across the book because I suddenly remembered wondering that about my own mum as a child and never saying anything to her. I was just really pleased they (hopefully) wouldn't feel they had to keep the same fear to themselves.

"Apparently Robert Munsch wrote I'll Love You Forever after he and his wife lost two babies at birth."
Oh God, as if the line "as long as I'm living my baby you'll be" doesn't already utterly destroy me...

Never mind never getting to the end of that book, I can't get through the first page.

I don't get "can't you sleep little bear" at all

All I can think is "just go to fecking sleep you little sod."

duchess for me the moving books (Love you forever and Once there were giants gets me every time) is the residual memory of being held by my mother and everything being in the moment, happy and warm and loved. You're there in the here and now when you are small.

As a grownup you are more aware of the transience of, well, everything. The awareness of danger in going off to war, or that loss and sadnesses can happen. The love is still warm and vibrant and there, and that is juxtaposed with the knowledge of sadness that comes in life.

also the sense of death. Death in a good sense really in Love you Forever, the Mum has reached the end of her life with so much love and is receiving it back now, but it's all in context of loss. The little baby does not know that, and as adults, well, there's a sense of pity and wanting to protect the baby and regret that you can't forever. Directly juxtaposed with all that unaware, innocent happiness in the baby.

Am kind of groping for words here, but hope some of what I mean comes over.

Oh Maw The Big Ugly Monster and the Little Stone Rabbit broke my heart in Waterstones when I read it, I actually sobbed and had to go and hide til I'd got myself together. Just heartbreaking.

And I'd never read 'On the Night You Were Born' before this thread, and it's a bloody good job, there's no way on earth I could have read that to my DC without drowning them in tears!

"Harris Finds His Feet" makes me sob like a total child. It's for slightly older children and my KS1 class love it; their special treat is when I leave it for a cover teacher to read for them because I cannot make it through in one piece.

Harris Hare's grandad teaches him everything and one day stops running after Harris because he is too old and slowing him down .

My A Level English teacher read us The Giving Tree in one of our last lessons; the whole class were inconsolable.

Never mind the books, this thread is making me well up. I do have a newborn though, hormones!

The Dancing Tiger. Gets me every time, and when DS1 was little I couldn't get through it without crying. I actually wrote to the author, Malachy Doyle, to tell him what an impact it had (DS had said to me 'can you tell the writer to make it so you don't cry' so I did it on a whim) and he sent me the sweetest email back, which I printed out and stuck inside the book. I will never, ever get rid of it, love that story so much.
Oh, and Owl Babies - 'She came back!'

I Love you night and day gets me every time.... Because I love you with my whole heart, from where you end to where you start. Sob!

Also paper dolls - every time the kind granny, and the ending. It makes me realise time really is so precious.

Paper Dolls - welling up now just thinking about it! As mother to a DD, I think its the notion of seeing myself in the girl in the book, with my mother and memories of a kind grandma, who then goes on to have a daughter of her own, but then also seeing the girl in the book as my own DD who will go on - perhaps - to have a child of her own one day and continue the lineage.

Definitely a must for mums of girls, IMO.

I always struggled to get through Monkey Puzzle by julia Donaldson, a little monkey can't find its mum and a butterfly is a bit crap about helping and the baby monkey gets more and more wound up til finally it finds mum. It always really upset me, the poor little monkey looking for its mum. Ridiculous, looking back now!

Owl babies gets me very emotional.

I used to sniffle at the book Small. About a boy who stays at Grandma's house for the first time and forgets his toy cuddly mouse. The mouse battles through the puddles and runs away from cats and climbs walls to get to the boy and he's happy. It's just the thought of the adult going "Oh no, he's forgotten his toy!" and running back to deliver it that gets me.

On the night you were born is wonderful and makes me cry. And yes to the person who cried at stick man - I always cry at that too.

Oh and there's one called The Big Big Sea (also Martin Waddell, he must have a knack!) which is about a mum who wakes up her daughter in the middle of the night to go and paddle in the sea. It's written in a very gently rhyming rhythm, and there are two bits - the little girl saying "I'll always remember, just Mum and me, and the time we walked in the big big sea" and the mum says "Remember this time, it's the way life should be". DONE. I am over.

The Big Big Sea - yes, hugely emotional! That would have been fourth on my list but I couldn't remember the title or author.

I randomly picked it up at school to read to my class; I'd never read it before. Big mistake! It was a real lump-in-the-throat-tear-jerker!

I unsuspectingly read Oliver Jeffers' The Heart in the Bottle to my son in the library a few weeks ago and ended up a sobbing mess.

Also 'There's going to be a baby' by John Burningham, which is potty because I really don't want another baby, it just makes me sad that my son won't have any siblings.

DS doesn't want it any more, he says it is boring and babyish :( Despite the fact last time I read it to him he listened raptly and then asked "Can we do that one day?" in a really excited voice. We aren't by the sea though.

But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

We have this on audio cd and I can't even listen to it without crying.

LiegeandLief I am totally with you and the others who have suggested that. My DS never got at all just why I was literally sobbing (I mean, really sobbing) the first time and every time after I read it to him.

Why do they have to grow up?!!

Can understand why people whose children were not born with 10 fingers and toes hate it but it did make me blub, just because I think it's about how every child is special to its parents. Although, obviously not every child is born with 10 fingers and toes, the point of the story is all the children come from different backgrounds and places, and lead different lives. So a kind of "we're all different but we're all the same really" message which I think is lovely to share with kids.

I also love Dogger and the Painted Dolls and they make me cry every time. Also the Red Woollen Blanket which is about a little girl growing up from a baby to a school girl and not needing her comfort blanket any more. Anything that is about kids growing up makes me sob.

Oh yes Baby Brains when Mrs Brains comes running. Gets me every time. ie we all need our mummies no matter how clever or grown up we are.