Tell us what books you read with your Grandparents to WIN a full set of The Owl and the Pussy-cat picture edition books

[ChrissieMumsnet]

To coincide with National Grandparents Day on Sunday 5 October we’re giving away ten sets of the treasured children’s bedtime story book, The Owl and the Pussy-cat as well as the follow-up title, The Further Adventures of the Owl and the Pussy-cat, which has a companion CD.

The new picture edition of Edward Lear’s classic poem features illustrations by Charlotte Voake while The Further Adventures of The Owl and the Pussy-cat creates a wonderful new story penned by The Gruffalo author, Julie Donaldson.

To enter our competition, we’d like to hear about the stories you read once upon a time with your grandparents. Whether old literary favourites or less well-known gems, we want to know the books that help generations of families unite. Share your stories on this thread before 10am Thursday 9 October. The publication of The Owl and the Pussy-cat and The Further Adventures of The Owl and the Pussy-cat is 2 October 2014.

This competition is sponsored by Puffin Books.

My grandfather used to read to us from a collection of African folklore called The Long Grass Whispers and The Singing Chameleon. They were I think quite like the Brer Rabbit stories.

More memorably he used to read the Story of Horace, which was all about how a bear who lived with a large family slowly ate them all up. We loved it and knew it by heart! I've told it to my children too and it's great fun to 'read' in the car.

My Grandma had my Mum's old books that she'd read with us. I remember this poem from one of the compendium of stories and poems more than forty years later.

Two little hippopotamuses were dressed up one day,
In all their fine clothing so showy and gay,
The old woman said to her sweet son and daughter,
"Whatever you do stay clear of the water"
They promised obedience and scampered away,
Down to the brook where the big fishies play,
"That water looks lovely"said Yim-Yam to Yum,
"What do you say to a swim in swam swum?"
Yim-Yam bounded in and Yum followed him fast,
But soon a dark cloud o'er their pleasures were cast,
They both went home so nasty and dirty and wet,
That their father,the birch from the corner did get,
They both received a sound good thrashing,
And sent off to bed without any ration.

My family used to stay with my grandma for a week each summer. When I was very small I remember getting up at 6 every morning, quietly leaving my bedroom and climbing into my grandma's bed so that she could read me fairy tales from a treasury of tiny books. She can't have been thrilled but she never let on! That's a great memory from my childhood: spending time with just me and her before everyone was awake, snuggled up in bed with her arm around me as we read Cinderella and Puss In Boots.

My much younger cousins have the books now. I looked at getting a set for my DC but they're £150 on Amazon now! I look out for them in charity shops but haven't spotted a set yet.

My grandparents didn't read to me, there was a lot of grandchildren - but they told me lots of stories of their youth which I found fascinating growing up during the Irish War of Independence

i read each peach pear plum, the bear hunt, tales of tom kitten, peter rabbit and many more ! nannies are the best

My Nana read us A Teddy Bears Picnic and then took us and teddies for a picnic. It's funny that I now live quite close and it's a very boring field with a few trees where we picnic-ed. To me it was a make surrounded by woods then!

My grandma loved far away but made us an audio story collection. We had lots of cassette tapes with the cards losing all the stories in order in her loopy writing. i used to listen in my room with my brother while playing or on my Walkman in the car. All the classic fairytales and lots of moral stories i haven't heard since. i have no idea where she got the recordings from of they were off the radio or something. Sadly she passed away unelected and it's one of a list of questions i never asked her. Really wish i had these tapes for my children.

My nanny used to read me My Naughty Little Sister stories and I used to love them because I was a little sister! (Not so naughty though!)

This one! I didn't think anyone else would know it but its quite popular and theres loads of images on google...

I read Beatrix Potter's stories and also Alison Uttley. One granddad was a comics obsessive and kindled a love of the Beano, The Dandy and so on, which my children still share.

We used to read stories about a rabbit called Pookie, no one else I mention them to has ever heard of them, but just googled and it seems they were written by an author local to us, Ivy Wallace, and went out of print for about 20 years, before she and he daughters re-published them briefly in the early 90s.

I also liked reading the My Naughty Little Sister books with my grandma, as she used to tell me about things like bubble-and-squeak, or wash day always being on a Monday, that were just alien to me when I heard the stories, but a normal part of childhood for her.

The Rupert the Bear annual family tradition always was given one each year at Christmas.

Puffa Needs Help. I lived with my Grandparents for a few years when I was young and we read this book so often that my Nan knew it off by heart. I used to carry it about with me everywhere! I still have my copy and my DC have also had a chance to enjoy it

My dad's mum had a very dry wit and would read a lot of Beatrix Potter to me with her own wry comments about the fates befalling the animals.

Mostly I remember Edward Lear poems and lots of Spike Milligan. She gave me my dada old copy of Bad Jelly the Witch.

She was also an artist who collected books on myths and legends, fairies and creatures for her own inspiration. While I'm not an artist myself I have continued the love of encyclopaedias of the unusual!

My Gran had a story about a puppy being chased by bees which we always read a her house. She also used to make up stories about a pony for us. I can't remember my other Granny reading to me but when I was older I used to love reading all her Dick Francis novels.

Enid Blyton here too
My Nan read to us at her house. We had a drink in a special cup and a biscuit from the huge tin-exciting !
Lots of Shirely Hughes
A big set of Beatrix Potter books
Milly Molly Mandy
I was also fascinated by her large Children's Encyclopaedia Britannica in it's own special wooden presentation case

Enid Blyton for me too. Fond memories of The Faraway Tree.

We got told stories of billy goats gruff with the troll. The troll featured in many other tales that were told too to stop us from getting into mischief!

All the Winnie the Pooh books, so Winnie The Pooh, The House At Pooh Corner, and AA Milne's poetry- When We Were Very Young, and Now We Are Six.

Also, all the Beatrix Potter books, and The Wind In The Willows. And lots of Racey Helps and Molly Brett books. Particular favourite was The Jumble Bears.

Aww making me all nostalgic.

My grandma had a book called the butterfly ball which was the only book she ever read to us.

If you could persuade her to let you into her library there were lots of old books, very little books with tiny print. I remember borrowing little women, vanity fair, and others that have long since been forgotten. She didn't really do children's books. Unfortunately she passed away before I was old enough to have much of a say in anything, I managed to get her copy of little women.

All my grandparents had died well before I was born unfortunately. My mother reads to my boys and their favourite is Love You Forever by Robert Munsch.

My Grandparents read my lots of Enid Blyton - The Famous Five and Mallory Towers most notably. Also, The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, which I read to my daughter today!

My grandmother used to read The Tiger Who Came to Tea and other fairy tales to me, until I could read it all back to her.
My grandad would read the Just So stories, he had a hypnotic voice, smelled of imperial leather soap and did this thing with his finger whilst turning the pages, slightly rubbing his finger pad ridges across the top edge of the page before turning.
I love the smell of imperial leather to this day.

My gran read us mostly lady bird fairy tales. The ones I remember are the musicians of Bremen and the magic porridge pot. I can still see the pictures now!

However, on one visit she must have let me and my sister choose some new books. This being the early eighties, we chose a couple of he-man stories. I can still hear her broad Lancashire accent trying to recount the ridiculous tales, trying to get her tongue around the daft character names. Makes me smile to think about.

Ha - in fact, with a bit of googling, these are the ones I remember!

We read Green Eggs and Ham and lots of the children's classics like The Railway Children, Little Women and many others I can't remember at the moment

We stayed with Granny and Grandpa for a week in summer (middle of harvest, my parents were probably mightily relieved to be rid of us for a bit.) Other than that, we only usually saw them at Christmas and Easter. We always went for the same books, and they are indelibly marked in my memory as being associated with my grandparents, and I can still quote bits of them after all these years, and I read quite a bit of poetry because of them. Their house was full of books, and I am sat here across from some of their bookcases and books (adult ones, though - not the ones from my childhood, as they went to someone else.)

We read "the Owl and the Pussycat", and all the rest of Lear's Nonsense Songs. It was an illustrated edition from my grandmother's own childhood. It was the poem I learnt for my Brownie's Booklover's badge when I was old enough for that, and I still sometimes get it as an earworm - I was quietly reciting it to myself as I was walking down the corridor at work the other day.

We also had Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, "faster than fairies, faster than witches." Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales. Kipling's Just So Stories, "O my Best Beloved".

We also had various library books - one was a modern illustrated version of "Moses supposes his toeses are roses," which I didn't realise was from Singing in the Rain until I was an adult. There were other things as well, especially once we were old enough to read ourselves (like the Girl's Own Annual from about 1904.) But I don't remember all of them.

But best of all was Struwwelpeter. Nothing like a bit of Victorian terror. Cruel Frederick, whose dog was called Tray, which seemed a very odd choice of name for a god to me. Harriet who played with matches, and the crying cats. Johnny-Head-In-the-Air who fell in the canal, the great Agrippa and his ink-pot, the boy who wouldn't eat his soup and starved to death. And recently, someone sent me a link of an animated version of the Suck-a-Thumb story, and it's even worse animated. I'm in my 40s, and it still terrified me. I notice someone has linked to a picture upthread.

I have, of course, turned out to be totally normal. Ahem.