The princess and the wizard -Julia Donaldson

[pocketdoor]

Not one of her best. My god it goes on, and it doesn't even rhyme. And it's boring. And the plot is actually quite shit.

Aibu to give it to the charity shop and hope my toddler doesn't notice? Would rather read What the Ladybird Heard for the 177th time.

[Trinpy]

I've read The Everywhere Bear approx 1000000 times and I still can't work out how to get Bishop to rhyme with fish shop.

I do a fantastic dramatic reading of The Snail and The Whale.

[bonbonours]

We love them all here, even the princess and the wizard.
And scarf does rhyme with giraffe, and laugh.... Where we live anyway....

[Starlings27]

I often have to change the words a bit to make the lines scan properly - the Hairy McClary books are much better (and shorter, which is a bonus at bedtime!).

[pocketdoor]

Before long you might find yourself having to wade through Peppa Pig or other TV tie in books night after night after night after (well you get the picture) ... they are soul destroying!

Oh yes they are awful, I hide those after a few reads.

[AnElderlyLadyOfMediumHeight]

Room on the Broom is my favourite. Charlie Cook I love too. Tabby McTat comes close, but it irks me a bit that - as in Stick Man - it's the male character that goes off into the wide world and has an adventure, while the female is passive and rather marginalised. And why the busker Fred couldn't have been a Freda (or suitable scanning name) is beyond me. I do like Prunella and Pat (definitely a couple), though. Snail and the Whale and the Gruffalo's Child are refreshing in their anti-sexism.

The non-rhotic Southern-English rhyming is annoying (and I have as RP an accent as you'll find and I still don't rhyme 'giraffe' with 'scarf').

[Collectorofcookbooks]

I can still recite most JD books from when I used them to calm the DDs in the middle of the night. The CDs got us through many a long journey.

The Christmas showing is sacrosanct in our house! Was super excited to hear Zog is on this year.

Not a fan of the Scarecrow’s Wedding nor The Smartest Giant though.

[Collectorofcookbooks]

Apparently JD didn’t have a female couple in mind with Prunella and Pat, it was Axel S who drew Pat as a woman and JD loved it.

Anyone else love looking for the Gruffalo in the rest of the books? It’s there in some form in most of them.

[LapinR0se]

I have it on very good authority that Axel can’t bear Julia. Which I found rather interesting.

[pocketdoor]

Anyone else love looking for the Gruffalo in the rest of the books? It’s there in some form in most of them

Ah is it?! I've seen it in tiddler but nowhere else!

[user1467397458]

Giraffe and scarf rhyme for me . . .

[pocketdoor]

I have it on very good authority that Axel can’t bear Julia. Which I found rather interesting

Excellent niche piece of goss. I want to know more.

[maamalady]

@MayorHumdinger I love Fox's Socks simply because it's so clear from the pictures that the fox and the mouse have had one hell of a wild night. The mouse quietly getting dressed and having breakfast while supervising Fox finding the scattered clothes really makes me laugh.

My favourite JD books are Snail and the Whale (but not the way Sophie Ellis Bextor read it for cbeebies, that was a criminally terrible performance) and Paper Dolls. We've recently enjoyed Spinderella and The Troll as well, and Gruffalo/Sharing a Shell/Tabby McTat/Stick Man/Cave Baby/Sugarlump/Room on the Broom are all on regular rotation too.

Agree with PP that Princess and the Wizard, Singing Mermaid, and Rhyming Rabbit are quite poor - glad we don't have copies at home! The Highway Rat half hour animation that was on at Christmas is much better than the book too.

[pretendingtowork1]

oh God, I couldn't bear that awful princess book and my daughter loved it, I was so tempted to sneak it into the charity shop bag!

[maamalady]

OP - in Tabby McTat there's a child cuddling a Gruffalo teddy on one page. Stick Man is the Gruffalo's Child's toy too.

[Lethaldrizzle]

I remember reading a very similar story to the princess and the wizard in a book of old russian folk tales or something similar, so she didn't come up witth the idea!

[HolyMountain]

I read the Princess and the Wizard to my reception class today , I love thd opportunity to release my inner luvvie abs act my socks off with different voices .

I love JD and the Scarecrow’s Wedding is another I thoroughly enjoy acting my socks off for.

[HolyMountain]

*and

[Muddlingalongalone]

@lethaldrizzle dd1 had that book as a school reading book last year.

[Collectorofcookbooks]

The Gruffalo is on the knights shield in Zog and on a cookie st the end of the Highway Rat.

[MayorHumdinger]

I can't bring myself to buy their separate projects. I feel it's akin to choosing a parent in a divorce.

Prunella and Pat are absolutely a couple.

I love that the witch in RotB is ugly but kind. I love that the princess hates silly frilly dresses.

@evilgiraffe who even gets dressed in that order! He puts his hat on before his socks. I do like the tea drinking creatures in the Acorn Woods books.

[HappyHedgehog247]

Enjoyed this thread! Going to have to buy squash and squeeze one now. Paper dolls makes me cry.

[Agustarella]

This was DD1's favourite book and I had to buy a second copy when it went missing! We both liked the part where the wizard "laughed his horrible laugh" which is quite fun to read, and experiment with laughing horrible laughs. DD2 is a monkey obsessive and loves Night Monkey, Day Monkey, which I find annoyingly whimsical. 'Screeching owls, the colour of peas and carrots!' always annoys me because carrots don't grow in the tropics - strangely, the fact that this line is spoken by a talking nocturnal monkey doesn't bother me at all.

The Gruffalo went in the charity bag last week without a word of protest from any of the DCs. It's pretty overrated IMO.

[littlestrawby]

Urgh i can't stand tabby mctat!!! It is so so clunky and doesn't flow at all. So long and boring. I particularly hate their 'favourite tune' that they like to sing.

Tiddler also terrible. Only really like the gruffalo and a squash and a squeeze.

I do find that once you've read a handful of them, the rest are all very similar sounding, despite the different plots!

[StitchesInTime]

I read The Ugly Five recently and I hated it.

Five different creatures moping about how ugly they are. Except.... they’re only ugly from a human point of view.

I don’t believe for a second that a wildebeest, for example, will be considering her spindly legs, gingery beard, big chunky chest and skinny behind ugly. No. She’s far more likely to be thinking “what a good looking wildebeest I am! Look at that ugly zebra with its chunky legs and poorly proportioned body, and the poor thing has no beard at all!”
Same with the rest of them.

Just like humans don’t go around thinking how we’re ugly because we have hardly any body hair compared to other animals

I have possibly been overthinking this. But it’s quite detracted from the inner beauty message that I assume Donaldson’s trying to get across.

[AppleKatie]

I clearly have the right accent because all the rhymes complained about upthread sound totally normal to me!
Scarf/giraffe no problem!