Which toddler books do you loathe?

[LiverpoolMummy89]

I asked for books for DD2 for Christmas and got some lovely ones that she enjoys but there’s one I absolutely hate - Dear Zoo. I know it’s one of the more well known ones but the fact that the ungrateful little kid sends back all the animals back and gets a perfect puppy at the end grinds my gears 😂

Are there any other books to stay clear of? This is a light hearted thread btw

So true!

Pirate dinosaurs.
As far as I can tell the author went : "Oh boys like dinosaurs and boys like pirates, therefore we can put them together and don't have to worry about making a sensible storyline because they'll love it anyway".

Yes, I enjoyed it as a fledgling reader and would agree that it's probably best discovered at that point. Unfortunately (for me, but fortunately from his point of view) it was a gift for my pre-school son who absolutely loves books, so there's no way we could squirrel it away! To be fair, this is a very first world problem... I really shouldn't complain that my children love books (and I was/am a bookworm myself so I'm thrilled, really)!

My son has been given these books and they sit languishing in a far corner of his bookcase because they look cool but books with decent storylines are what he keeps coming back to. Children aren't as shallow as the publishers assume!

Probably a bit obscure, but we had a quite good story book all about teddy bears and there was one story in it that DD was obsessed about, Telephone Ted. I bloody hated that bear. I begged her to let us read ANY of the other stories but she’d 9/10 times insist on Telephone Ted.

Ah yes, that's tricky 😬 We were given some Mr Men books and much as I would love to 'lose' then, the person who gave us them often asks who his favourite is. Sigh!

Tiger who came to tea

No boundaries and pushes around the mother and daughter until just before the man comes home to save the day.

No thanks. Bin that.

I love The Tiger who came to Tea, but why doesn’t Sophie put clothes on to go to the cafe? Why take her out for a meal in her nightie? I am irrationally annoyed by this. I always say ‘all the beer’ instead of ‘all Daddy’s beer’…

I heard an interview with Judith Kerr and she denied it was an allegory for Nazi Germany!

The Dinosaur that Pooped X,Y, Z series annoys me as it's gross, but also, the rhymes are extremely tenuous!

DS had one of those Donosaur that Pooped ones out of the library once. I hate poop/pooped. I'm not American. So it was extra annoying. I insisted on reading it as pooed every time and wouldn't get another one out again.

I also have an irrational hatred of the word 'Oi' so the book is 'Hey Frog' in our house! Luckily it isn't hugely popular.

Everything mentioned so far is a work of literary genius compared with...

"In a dark, dark town there was a dark, dark street
and in the dark, dark street there was a dark, dark house,
and in the dark, dark house there were some dark, dark stairs...."

That sort of repetition drives me absolutely up the wall. Can't stand it.

The Ant and Bee books by Angela Banner … really lame stories based around the alphabet.
The Thomas books written by Rev Audrey are really hard to read with no flow.

In a dark, dark town there was a dark, dark street
and in the dark, dark street there was a dark, dark house,
and in the dark, dark house there were some dark, dark stairs....
Ah but do you not remember the kick you got out of it as a child? (Sorry if you hated it then too!!)

But I imagine said at the right place and fairly quietly it would get children off to sleep fairly quickly!

This really makes it clear how we need more Midlands and Northern accents on TV if people from the South really don't know this!

We pronounce "giraffe" as jerr-AFF and not jerr-ARF

Anyway on topic and yes Owl Babies is such a rubbish story: "OMG Mum's gone!" "Oh wait, she's back just like every other day". The End.

@snowlaser but presumably if you're pronouncing giraffe as "gir-AFF" then you're pronouncing scarf as "sc-AFF?!"

;-)

Nope, because “scarf” has an “R” in it, which we pronounce.

If giraffe was spelled “girarf”, we’d pronounce it to rhyme with “scarf”. But since it isn’t, we don’t.

Well if you're going down that route...how do you pronounce father, half, laugh @Changechangychange?

And why does she try and have a bath before dinner/supper/tea?! 🤷😆

Differently to you, obviously! Father - longer “a” but definitely no R sound. Half - haff. Laugh - laff.

So half and laugh rhyme but are spelt differently?

Then why can't scarf and giraffe rhyme in another British accent? 😆

Other accents can pronounce things any way they like.

If you follow the quotes back, I was responding to somebody saying “presumably if you're pronouncing giraffe as "gir-AFF" then you're pronouncing scarf as "sc-AFF?!"

Which doesn’t even make sense as an argument as those are different graphemes, and certainly isn’t going to convince me that the whole of the North of England is pronouncing “giraffe” wrong.