To think bedtime stories should not be emotional?!

[Cadela]

This is lighthearted!

Just read Dd the Paper Dolls and got slightly choked up at the boy chopping them up, full on holding back sobs at the memories bit with granny 😭 Trying to read a bedtime story with a massive lump in your throat is a nightmare!

The other one that does it to me is ‘The Girls’ when they all come back to the tree all grown up.

In my defence I’ve been an easy crier since pregnancy and happy to show Dd all emotions but sobbing during bedtime isn’t what I planned 😂

Is there a bedtime book that does it for you too?

The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde.

I think Goodbye Mog is quite a happy book. It’s devastating when a beloved pet dies but Mog had a long and wonderful life (well, going to the V.E.T. and peeing in the tent and Christmas tree/Debbie falling off a skyscraper/being stroked by a baby fears aside…) and her spirit is able to be free because she’s sorted out the Thomases with a lovely new kitten.

DS (5) cried tonight at Mrs Wobble the Waitress “because she’s so sad and her children are sad and that’s how I would feel if you lost your job Mummy!”

Has anyone read Grandpa Christmas? There aren’t many books that get me choked up every time but that is one.

I remember our school reading books being New Way, and one of the orange series being The Happy Prince / The Selfish Giant. My mum was still commenting 20 years later how much that tag team wrecked her. I'm now sorely tempted to find a copy to repeat the experience with my own daughter in a few years!

Mousehole Cat is absolutely heartbreaking!

My daughter is 17 and the thought of Paper Dolls still makes me well up. And loads of others, especially ones where little kids grow up. Eg Charlie and Lola I am absolutely too small for school and The Red Woolen Blanket. And then older books like Charlotte's Web.

Dogger is lovely not sad but lovely can make me cry as much as sad can. My kids used to find it very funny "mum's crying again"

The Velveteen Rabbit. Jesus H Christ I can't read that with my heartbreaking and if ever I hear talking of something 'becoming real' I'm done for. Unwrapping that book for Christmas when I was 4 is one of my earliest memories.

I am incapable of reading the Paper Dolls without choking up. Every. Single. Time. My kids are endlessly perplexed by this!

The Ugly Duckling, ladybird classics version. I properly choke up when he meets the swans in the end and he thinks they're about to snub him too.

I read Operation Nativity by Jenny Pearson with the middle 2 at Christmas and one of the last chapters had me bawling so much that DD had to take over the reading, I could not get the words out. Wonderful book though.

Although I should say I blub at a good 25% of the bedtime stories we read. Not just Paper Dolls but also the Christmas Pine for some reason.

Must be hormones! Or just chronic sleep deprivation

Goodbye Mog. I had to pretend I was going for a wee to pull myself together.

I agree that Dogger is a happy ending, but I can't even think about how "Bella did a very kind thing" without getting a bit husky.

I had an audiocassette of The Velveteen Rabbit that I used to fall asleep to as a bedtime story!! Most unreasonable thing ever.

Mostly I fell asleep before the sad bits.

But I do also have vivid memories of creeping down the stairs to my parents in floods of tears, to the point my nightie was wet, after I took a bit longer to fall asleep than usual. Traumatised. What was my mother thinking?!

I thought of "Grandpa's Island" when I saw this thread. I didn't realise what it was about until I was already reading. Really choked up!

I read through it in bloody Waterstones, and cried my eyes out in the shop. Then took it home for DD because our much-loved cat had just died, read it to her and cried again. And again, and again...

The Mousehole Cat has the same effect on me,with the bloody cat thinking she won't get any fish if the old man doesn't come back so she'd better go with him. I'd say it was all the fault of the cats if it wasn't that Guess How Much I Love You has the same stupid effect!

That's so funny about sunrise sunset but I totally get it!

Just remembered Stickman. I read it to my kids and nephew at Christmas after my 7 year old cousin had recently lost his dad very suddenly and unexpectedly. 'It won't feel like Christmas without their stick dad' 😭

Oh no ☹️☹️

I am usually hard as nails but dogger gets me (then Bella did a very kind thing…) and also a book called tell me what it’s like to be big which is about a little sister and her big brother (“I might have to go into the world all by myself - there might be nobody there!” “Spotty Ted will be there. You can keep him forever if you like.”)

Fully agree with "Peepo" - the last section where it says "and a mother with a baby just like him" sets me off. My kryptonite though is "Holly and Ivy" by Rumer Godden, which I can manage to read once a year at Christmas and sob through the last few pages.

I thought I was being ridiculous getting weepy over Bella doing a kind thing in Dogger but I'm glad I'm not the only one!

I also get misty eyed at Peepo when he's going up to bed and sees a "mother with a baby, just like him" and that's even less logical!

Ha these are really interesting. I blub over all kinds o things but it had never occurred to me to cry at Dogger or Peepo! just shows we’re all moved by different things. I have a weird one- Rosie Revere Engineer. makes me well up every single time dammit even when I psych myself up for it!

Oh! That has made me choke up a few times. The line about ‘it flopped… but first it flew’ (misremembered the exact words)

oh god yes, to those who've said the Happy Prince and Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde.
Same with Peepo, my voice would always crack at the 'mother with a baby just like him'!!
I had the velveteen rabbit as a small child and read it to myself and didn't get it at all, or I think I was somehow suspicious that it was a 'sentimental book' trying to manipulate children. However remember being in floods of tears with the Moomins where Moominpappa finishes recounting his memoirs and there's a knock at the door and it's all his old friends who were in the memoirs who have chosen that very moment to visit!

I used to read a lot of Dickens to the kids, and couldn't get through the death of little Dorrit's mother when the metaphor is used of her drifting out on the tide and the little girl watching her. Dickens was an absolute master at this. And the scene in Christmas Carol with the two destitute children with elderly wizened faces.

Basically over emotional. That was the good thing about Enid Blyton, there was literally no complex emotion whatsoever!

The Paper Dolls is just perfection. I can't think of a better representation of loss.

I found JKR's The Christmas Pig very touching. Not at all what I was expecting.