To think that some children's stories are awful to read aloud?

[VioletBam]

Enid Blyton I'm looking at you.

Also...while I love My Naughty Little Sister...the way the stories are written are terrible to read out loud.

It's a very specific style that author has....sort of child-like...Enid bloody Blyton though!

Just churned my way through 2 chapters of The Magic Faraway Tree and God! It was hard going.

Those short sentences...how she mentions everything umpteen times.

Rainbow Fairies are special magic books full of secrets that only little girls and their fairy friends can know. Mummies are not allowed to read them, or listen to them being read out loud.

W the P gets easier as you read more of it.

Nobody has mentioned the Just So Stories, a pleasure to recite 'On ran dingo, yellow dog dingo...'

Ooh AintNobodyHereButUsKittens I'm stealing that one brilliant!

'The Dinosaur that pooped...' books are hard to read aloud as they don't flow.

I like reading the Mr Men books and the Faraway tree books as they bring back memories for me.

I love the Hairy McClary books so much - they're so much easier to read than practically all DS's other books, that I pretty much only ever read those at bedtime. He can have other books during the day, but bedtime is time for iambic pentameter.

I'm reading 'Letter for the King' to my 7 year old. Meant to be a brilliant book but the translation is dire. So boring and repetitive. We're slogging our way through it hoping it gets better. Next one up is Moondial which I remember loving as a child so here's to hoping.

Actually I'm not sure it is iambic pentameter. It scans well, anyway.

Yy to Mr Men. The only advice ive foisted onto a pregnant friend was "Do Not buy the Mm books". Awful.

Love hairy maclary and Oliver Jeffers too, especially Lost.

A favourite of mine to read out loud is Night Monkey Day Monkey. I give them both Yorkshire accents and it works soo well with the words.

I love Tyrannosaurus Drip! All Julia Donaldson is fun to read.

I hate books which are poor spin offs of TV or films. All the Peppa Pig books are terribly written. Also the Minions movie book and some of the Disney film books - it's like a really boring person telling you what happens in the film.

Ds1 (3.5) is enjoying Just William. Nearly as much as dh us enjoying reading it to him

Starling 4 sets of 2. Iambic octameter?

I love Roald Dahl books on the whole but 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator' makes me want to rip my eyeballs out when I read it aloud to the kids.

My DDs loved a book by Posy Simmonds called (I think) The Chocolate Wedding. It was a comic strip style and the pictures were beautiful but the dialogue was so trite it made me cringe to read it. I used to hide it but they always found it. We all loved Shirley Hughes, especially Dogger - just thinking about it makes me tear up.

If you can get hold of any Kevin Henkes books, particularly Julius Baby of the World or Chrysanthemum, snap them up. They are laugh out loud funny, and so witty and clever, both the words and the pictures. Plus they are so beautifully written the words just flow. Both DDs are grown up but phrases from those books are part of our family vocabulary even now.

I have kept a few of the most precious children's books in the hope I might be able to read them to grandchildren one day. Except for The Chocolate Wedding. I will give that straight to any GCs and laugh in joyous revenge as my daughters have to read it to them.

HMCC is iambic tetrameter, I reckon. Down in the TOWN by the BUTCHER'S shop DOOR- I count 4 iambic feet.

I couldn't read Fangs: Vampire Spy to DS but because I was laughing so much I couldn't get my words out (I sort of read ahead while I'm reading aloud so I can 'edit' if you know what I mean). I pre-read one passage in my head & totally lost it.

Enid Blyton is awful to read aloud.

Judith Kerr books are great to read out loud.

I also like Kaye Umansky's 'Noisy Picture Books' with Little Red Hen that raps and the Three Little Pigs. DD asks for those again and again.

One Ted Falls Out of Bed by Julia Donaldson is good for little ones.

Older children...Redwall books are brilliant for reading out loud. Brian Jaques wrote them for blind children, I believe- so great descriptions. Long though. Reaaaaally long.

Lynne Reid Banks 'The Indian in the Cupboard' is great to read out loud.

How To Train Your Dragon - great stories for reading in your head, great vocabulary (DS loves curling up with a httyd book and a dictionary!) but they are impossible to read aloud without tripping over your tongue or running out of breath!

Julia Donaldson is either brilliant or slightly painful, depending on the book. Agree with a pp, night monkey is lovely to read, and monkey puzzle. Tabby McTat on the other hand.. Bits of it don't scan right, I never remember the tune I made up for the song and get yelled at by the kids for doing it wrong.. They do love the story though.

Wind of the willows was awful to read aloud too, we gave up after a page. I think that page was just one very veeery long sentence with about a thousand commas, a load of relative clauses, a handful of semi colons and absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Oooh, yes, Just So Stories are a joy. I love teaching them. Such beautiful language.

I just remembered how much my two adored the Alfie stories when they were little. I've recently taken on an extra few hours in Year 1 and I have really enjoyed revisiting them. The story when Bernard teaches Annie Rose to talk is lovely. Plus, whenever we go to the beach we always find a Bonting. I use the one when Alfie gets locked inside the house in PSHE.

A horror to read out loud is any Harry Potter. It really strikes you how boring repetative language is used. Not the case with Philip Pullman, Garner or Le Guin. Every word is worthwhile.

A book that bugged me for years was the Elephant and the Bad Baby. It's utterly brilliant. It just takes all your breath. My kids loved it, as do I.

Daphne I really enjoyed reading the How To Train Your Dragon books out loud. But you do need to concentrate in order to maintain voices and get ahead on the long sentences so that you know what's coming. Terry Pratchett has the same issue, but the voices are such a joy to do that it's worth the hard work.

Charlie and lola books are my worst...it's all 'Charlie said', 'then lola said', 'so I said'. Use a different word. Argh!

Anthony Horrowitz's Groosham Grange would be another one with good voices that is easy to read out loud! Definitely for older kids though. Pretty short though.

pringles yes! Bloody awful! And I love the tv show! The books are dreadful.

pointy I am shattered by bedtime which is usually reading time so it's definitely me more than the author! The kids love the tv series as well so trying to mimic the right voices when lots of the characters have different names is too much for my brain to cope with. I cracked and got the cd of the first book, David Tennant does it brilliantly.

Totally agree about Terry Pratchett, so much fun to read aloud!

Yy to elephant and the bad baby. Fun to read! I also like Margaret Mahy's books - Down the back of the Chair, Bubble Trouble, the Man from the Land of Fandango. Not a trite rhyme in sight. Bubble trouble is especially tasty to read out loud.

Narnia.......total pain in the arse!!!