to think that Spot books are just really really badly written?

[emkana]

I have to make up my own words to them.

And don't even get me started on the Mr.Men books. Hate them.

And as for Thomas the Tank Engine... they make me lose the will to live.

Yeh! At last a fellow Gruffalo-hater!

I could have written it - in ten minutes. And it just smacks of NCT/Boden/bedtime routines blah de blah. I saw there was a theatre production of it doing the rounds. Can you just imagine the pushy mums thrusting their sprogs forward and the stench of masticated rice cakes permeating the theatre...

I bought the Garden Gang books for dd having loved them as a child.

Thankfully I don't recall having ever read anything Spot related.

At the moment we have to read King Rollo's New Shoes and King Rollo and the Birthday Card every day. They are mercifully short. And slightly more entertaining to read than watch iirc. DH plays the magician as the emperor from Star Wars.

I enjoy reading Burglar Bill.

Agree that anything that is basically a spin off of a TV series is invariably awful - the Tombliboos Trousers story from ITNG has makka pakka acting as a glorifed butler/slave again.

I still have some of my original garden gang books.

Second Oxford Reading Tree.

Just horrible.

ive taken my two to see the gruffalo and tiger who came to tea on they stage and we all wore boden

kids loved it

[bit of a fib about the boden by the way]

Although my youngest is now 5 and supposedly getting a little beyond picture books, we still read anything Julia Donaldson (our family fave is "The Snail and the Whale"), Oliver Jeffers (Lost and Found, How to Catch a Star etc), Charlie and Lola, Clarice Bean, fab to see a mention of "Girrafes Can't Dance" earlier on.... even ds (7) still wants that! We no longer need to read Dr Seuss as we can all recite the whole lot from memory!

For older readers, I detest with a passion the "Fairy Magic" series! Aaaaaaarrrrgh! Though ds likes "Beast Quest" which seems to be the equivalent for boys.

Hated reading Dora, Spot, never got into Thomas thank goodness!

The worst thing about 'That's not my...' books is how horribly inaccurate a lot of the adjectives are.

Oliver Jeffers is great, we love those too.

But madge, are you not the utterly charming star of a fairly gruesome girls series yourself?

newgirl on Thu 07-May-09 14:20:38
ive taken my two to see the gruffalo and tiger who came to tea on they stage and we all wore boden

kids loved it

ooh newgirl us too, except the boden bit
the gruffalo is fab!!

Dr Suess - the fox in bleeding sox!! Try to read that after even sniffing the wine bottle and some of the others are even worse

Although I do love Cat in the Hat

I do share your hatred for Oxford tree - dd is in reception and doing them now. I just can't wait for ds to start in September and to have to do the same set for the second time ......arrgh those ones that you have to read the cards with .......

Charlie and Lola is pretty OK, ds loves Noddy and anything slightly rude ( aliens loving underpants and Spaceboy spud with the Island Pee Pee - don't ask)

Now - I love Beatrix potter but it really is the nostalgia bit. I remember the pictures from when I was a kid

Thomas and the Mr Men are unreadable - as is that silly sod Percy the Park Keeper.
Horton, I have a friend who has excised the word "bad" from the Elephant and the Bad Baby too! She doesn't believe in bad. I wonder if it's the same person?

My daughter, DH and I love Julia Donaldson's books; Charlie and Lola; The BEar in the Cave( which drives me bonkers- but she can recite it word by word!!!); Aliens/ dinosaurs wear Underpants;Giraffes can't Dance; Charlie Stinky Socks; The Tickle Monster; the Mr Croc books with the flaps and pop ups at the end; Shark in the Park- quite like Nick Sharratt... she has a bookcase full of books- we could open a library!!!

My daughter is only 2 and half but she has been read to since being a few months ld and she has a love of books and stories. I love the way she will tell the story back to herself using the pictures- I think as long as they are listening to/ reading that has got to be a positiv thing and it doesn't matter what we think fo thebook- surely a love of reading is more important (spot the English teacher!!).

Oliver Jeffers is amazing, I cried the first time I read Lost and Found! Have you seen the TV dramatisation? It's beautiful.

I am another Gruffalo hater, my girls like it but I find her style of writing incredibly predictable and tedious.

We don't do Mr. Men! They are violent and far too convoluted. Both my daughters lost interest 1/2 way through.

The Tiger Who came to tea was very popular here a few months back, my two will pretty much read anything but I am harder to please. Has anyone read The Dancing Tiger? That's another with truly beautiful illustrations.

We were given the entire collection of Beatrix Potter, they are all still in the loft, I find them rather twee and annoying.

The Dancing Tiger is fabulous. My DD cries and cries at it and then begs to read it again. It's really lovely. The Tiger Who Came To Tea is also wonderful - has been entertaining DD now for well over a year.

God save me from kids books! I don't mind spot or the 'thats not my...' series as at least they are readable with half your brain open.

I CANNOT stand thomas - they are practically unreadable. Convoluted story, no rhythm and my 4 yr old loses interest after the 2nd page.

Gruffalo is OK but then I end it half way through "oh look, oh no, silly little mouse didn't you know? there IS such thing as a gruffalo"

I adore "good night little grog" and "there's a shark in the park" and I'm actually quite fond of a series of digger/truck/train/aeroplane books DS was given. I'm a big fan of rhytmic and rhyming prose as it makes it so much easier to read alound.

I also like (nostalgia) Goodnight moon, each peach pear plum, and any shirley hughes.

I bin books frequently, pet peeves of mine are rhyming prose that doesn't rhyme or scan easily, TV spinoffs and moral stories which are nauseatingly PC.

oh - just remembered - don't talk about the Bartholomew bear books - what a waste of money those were!

Shark in the park is great, my daughters are big fans of Nick Sharratt, I don't mind Julia Donaldson when she writes for him, and I do quite like Sharing a shell...

I don't really like the Felicity Wishes books, fortunately my two are digger obsessed so they don't get much attention. Has anyone dealt with Lettice the rabbit? Urgh, the stories would be better if the drawings were different but on the whole they are rather twee and infuriating.

The new Pooh stuff is hideous, and has anyone read The Grouchy Ladybird by Eric Carle? I was not best pleased when I read it to my then 2 year old - all about a ladybird who wants to fight! In fact whilst I think his art work is amazing the stories are generally quite pants, the hungry caterpillar is far too succinct at the end, the beauty of the transition gets lost.

Now I'm going to get a life and go to bed!

That is not how I remember you, Madam (curtsy). Possibly you did not skip around toadstools, but there was a good deal of merry ringing laughter and girlish grace if I recall. And surely the Robin had wings?
Jolly well done, marrying that doctor though. Just what the school needed (it was a death trap).

Goodnight Moon is lovely.

ooh a books thread goody!

i think it is really important you enjoy what you're reading. i have never got the thomas books and why some people love em - even te pictures are wierd. mr men are hard going but i can see why dd likes them - i love the pictures myself.

bloody princess books especially disney ones.

I just refuse (politely!) to read ones i don't like and offer a different one instead - good incentive for her to learn to read herself!

miffy is fab, cheerful pics and they're so short (great bedtime books)

and i really enjoy dr seuss - great rhythm so you never get bored of reading them

nobody's mentioned richard scarry! they're brilliant but i can't just can't get the hang of reading them out loud- dp does a much better job. very funny with visual gags and a bit of deliberate understatement for the grown ups!

my current fave is called 'there are cats in this book' - brilliant if you can get 'in character'...

will be when she doesn't want us to read her stories anymore..

HateHateHateHateHate Spot.

Some Mr Men books are OK (I quite like Mr Mean, for example) but some are dire.

We only have one TTTE book in the house and I manage to keep it hidden.

I also hate those Disney "story of the film" books. They are dull and badly written with no feeling for interesting vocabulary.

But the worst children's book ever is Freddie Meets Freddie by Chris Cowdrey. It's a cricket-themed book about how a cricket ball named Freddie gets separated from his owner, gets to meet Freddie Flintoff, and eventually makes it home. DH got it as part of a freebie bag at some sporting charity thing. It is dull. It is very badly written. And it is loooooong. It goes on and on and on and on and on in its dull, badly-written way until you would do anything anything for it to stop. It is longer, I wager, than reading all of the Mr Men and Spot books one after the other. My word, it is terrible. Really. Even if you are reading this post and agreeing with me that it sounds boring, you have not even begun to grasp the outer limits of dreadfulness of this book.

You can pick it up for 42p used on Amazon, if you'd like.

I have just noticed that there is a sequel. I am not sure that I want to live in a world where things like that happen.