Books you hate reading aloud to your children

[RosaTransylvania]

Was thinking tonight, as I trudged through a book I particularly dislike, how often my children reject my carefully chosen good books in favour of utter tripe. We're talking the Rainbow fairy books obviously, or history-obsessed DD2's current favourites, the turgidly written My Story series (though I suppose they are educational).
DD3 hits me with Topsy and Tim, Little Grey Rabbit and the unutterably tedious Animals of Farthing Wood.
What do you hate reading aloud?

Are rainbow fairies those awful Bella the golfish fairy type ones? ugh

bloody Pingu, sooo tedious

ditto Tweenies books, my heart sinks when dd gets it out

Barbie and the sodding Magic of Pegasus

can i just say that i love RoyKinnear's name? it makes me smile every time i see it...

thanks aitch - he was so lovely!

Your son is curiously cute too if I may say so Roy

And don't get me started on the hatefulness of the quarrelsome, snobbish, dimwitted engines in Thomas...
But Rosa, you have probably escaped Captain Underpants

That Little Bear Little Bear Little Bear one.

We had an utterly pointless one called Squeak squeak. Not any more

Those awful disney books, where they condense the film into a short story, and the pictures relate to their 'story' in not one definable sense!

Yes Marina and Thomas too, thank fuck thankfully.
But not Lemony Snicket unfortunately.

Ds will have a stab at anything but he gave up on Lemony after one book thank goodness
We did The Butterfly Lion in 48 hours when ds was ill and will always remember it, I think. We both wept buckets at the end.
Animals of Farthing Wood - boak, as expat would say.

Where the Wild Things Are - it's such an odd book imo. I don't know why people rave about it. I hate it if mine pick that one at bedtime.

Luckily the boys love all the Julia Donaldson ones that I love too - so usually OK

I love Where the Wild Things Are. Couldn't tell you why though! It is all very arbitrary isn't it?

Surprised no one has mentioned the Charlie and Lola books - they're so badly written and have no flow I find; 'and then charlie said, and lola said' - it's like listening to a conversation in a laundrette.

They are not very well written, but I quite like the pictures, which makes up for it. And my DD3 has a lot of Lola in her.

I don't mind doing Thomas TT because I do it all in Received Pronunciation and a little bit of Kenneth Williams and some Bernard Manning for the Fat Controller of course, otherwise it would be unbearable

I refuse to read and loathe any Disney/Pixar spinoff as they seem to be written by a committee with English as a fourth language whom has not seen the original movie.

Thank the Lord I have boys, Rainbow S*dding Fairies sound dreadful

Oh AND the Mr Men too, you're right they are awful and so much PADDING in the text

Fucking bastarding big overbearing purple fucker Barney! Erm it is after the watershed innit?

Oh Rachel and Kirsty...

ds1 is currently obsessed with bloody Mr Men. A few I enjoy, some are absolutely dreadful - no plot, over-egged moral, clunky language. If it's not Mr Men it's often bloody Thomas. Fortunately he will usually respond to appeals to 'get a different book' and bring me a nice Donaldson or the Pooh book (slightly abridged orinigal text, beautifully presented) ds2 'gave' him when he was born. He's only 2.5 and can't possibly understand it all, but he listens with rapt attention. He also, happily, loves me reading him children's poetry.

I think Dr Seuss is fab - so does ds1 - but they are long... and then he wants them 'again' - The Cat in the Hat three times in a row is what purgatory must be like, I think.

Oh (am on a roll here), we had Dear Sodding Zoo today. Dreadful. The content makes me shudder too - what a spoilt brat.

Guess How Much... is one of the few books I have 'lost'. Quite apart from the mind-numbingness of it, the message of 'big always trumps little' really began to bother me quite a lot.

Agree with Dear Zoo - should be 2 pages long, with the 2nd page being the zoo writing back to confirm they are not a petshop. It's like an unfunny version of the Timewaster letters.

miffy at the playground - not translated as well as later editions and it doesn't ryhme or any rythum at all.

all the others are a pleasure, mixed with pain and LO hits me over the head with them in the morning!!!

i won't do mr men or beatrix potter. i feel a ban on the large family is on its way soon. am getting heartily sick of the meg and mog flap book we got from the library last time because she's beginning to 'read' bits of it so just wants it over and over again and there's no story to it. is difficult to get a balance between something that's too long and wordy and takes too much effort (voices, accents, singing ) and things that just aren't proper stories. dd has a load of traffic club books that she loves and wants over and over and i do not.