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?

Now this has made me tear up. So lovely

Oh god the Lorax! I used to read that to my class as a nursery teacher with no problem, they loved it and would ask for it, I knew it nearly by heart. Then I had kids and tried to read it to them but couldn’t get through it at all as I kept crying 😭

Sorry OP!

Gosh, same! Agree re last Winnie the Pooh though, gets me every time.

My DH cried reading Giraffes Can't Dance. And i was like wtf? Until i read it and was a sobbing mess.

“But sometimes when you’re different
you just need a different song.” Ahhhhhh. So true cricket. So true.

This book is unforgivable.

new mother brings her home and rocks him to sleep saying “I’ll love you forever, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be”. She rocks him through different phases of his life, even when he’s a grown man.

then she gets sick ffs. And she’s dying. And the man goes to his mother and rocks her and says the phrase. Then he has a baby of his own and rocks his baby with the phrase.

it’s brutal. I can’t get through it without breaking down.

Knew this would be about Paper Dolls before I clicked!

I read it recently for the first time to a group of preschoolers, not knowing what was coming I obviously cried, they weren't very sympathetic either!

@goodkidsmaadhouse Yes! and the lovely old aunt who built planes during World War Two but has never actually flown in one comforting her when her invention flops: “Life might have its failures but this was not it/ the only true failure come come if you quit” BLUB

Ruby Flew Too still gets me!

I don't dare read paper dolls, I'm ok with snail and the whale but stick man always makes me cry, the Lorax too - I read dd oh the places you'll go 1 last time the night before she left for university, she often reads bedtime stories to her younger siblings but had not had one read to her for some time - it was a snot fest on both sides and we followed it with listening to slipping through my fingers

We did Snail and the Whale tonight and I was alright. I have banned Paper Dolls though, I’ve been getting choked up randomly throughout the day thinking about it 🤣

Paper Dolls used to make me cry when my boys were little. Now they’re older and love war stories and they’re even worse. There’s one beautiful book called War Game about the German and British soldiers in WW1 playing football on Christmas Eve on No Man’s Land and I have to get my boys to read the last bit. Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo is another one I can’t read the ending of because of the tears 🤣

Michael Morpurgo! He's got a lot to answer for. I picked up War Horse casually one day while passing the time at DC's tournament, and was in a million little pieces by the end of the day

I think Stick Man should come with a warning not to read it to kids who've had their dad walk out on them.

I knew it was going to be Paper Dolls when I read the title. Beautiful, brutal, lovely book

i only ever heard of the velveteen rabbit because of that episode of friends and then i got the book and cried reading it in front of the kids.

ditto some dogs do also. i love that book.
also ditto guess how much i love you even though hares give me the ick usually.
charlotte's web i couldn't stop crying at at the end but that's stating the blindingly obvious tbh.

If you really want a ‘horror’ bedtime story, how about this - found in a GM’s bookcase many decades ago. ‘Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories.’

One of them featured a little boy who was very worried when going to bed, because in church that day the vicar had quoted the line (presumably from the Bible) - ‘If thou shalt not save thy life tonight, tomorrow thou shalt be slain.’

But Mother told him not to worry, all it meant was that he should repent of his sins before going to sleep, and ask God for forgiveness.
So he did.

But oh, dear, what do you think? When Mother went to wake him in the morning, ‘…he was quite still and cold upon the bed. He had died in the night, of what cause even the doctor wasn’t quite sure.’ (See, I even remember the wording!)

But it was Ok, , because he’d repented and asked forgivenness before he died. 😱

If this sort of stuff was read to my DF, goodness knows how he turned out such a cheerful and uncomplicated type!

I was in a bookshop when goodbye Mog came out the assistant said they didn’t want to open the boxes with the books in. They said that she was a cat killer. Seriously I lent the book out to quite a few parents who had animals who died. It was in a bag with some soft toy cats. Badgers parting gifts is very sad.

I remember getting a book called tadpoles promise from the library when my kids were small. I found it harrowing whereas my husband laughed at the ending (for those who havent read it, a tadpole and caterpillar become friends, promise they wont change, fall out as tadpole keeps changing, then caterpillar turns into a butterfly, decides to find him to forgive him, but hes a frog so doesnt recognise her and accidentally eats her. He then spends the rest of his days sitting waiting for her to return)

I'm also almost certain I didn't make this up but I swear I remember crying at a sequel to We're going on a bear hunt about the bear who was all alone and just lonely and gutted when everyone finds him but runs away 😭he just wanted some friends

@Whaleandsnail6 do you mean The Bear in The Cave? Michael Rosen wrote that too and I always think it's the same bear.

We had a storybook when I was a kid with the Little Match girl. Anyone remember it. F*ing hell. I'm 47 and even thinking about this story makes me deeply uncomfortable.

I've never heard of that one. I will absolutely never attempt to read it though... I couldn't even make it through your description wth man! 😢

ive iust googled it wtf!

Yes I used to love that story when I was a child. Goodness knows why! I can remember the illustration of her looking in at a brightly lit window with these happy well off children inside.

When DS was older I was reading Goodnight Mister Tom with him. Had to stop reading as was sobbing too much!

Most Michael Morpurgo books!