Recommendations for reading out loud generally

[Elf]

I've been struck recently by how easy it is to read aloud both Roald Dahl and Michael Morpurgo (sp?). An absolute pleasure. Compared to reading, for instance, the Worst Witch which didn't seem to flow at all. Or Dick King Smith whose stories I think are great but is not so good for the adult to read aloud.

I thought we could have a general read aloud recommendation list. So, to start -

Roald Dahl
Michael Morpurgo

Hi I am a new member who is passionate about what books are good to read out loud. As far as my two and a half year old is concerned the real winners are;
Isabel's Noisy Tummy (brilliant for sound effects and the best punchline ever written)
Any Hairy McLairy book
Big Red Bath
The Gruffalo
The Bad Tempered Ladybird
The Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business

As a child my mum would read me Milly Molly Mandy and the My Naughty Little Sister books and I have very fond memories of both.

I'd love to hear what other people think!

I also have a 2.5 yr old DS who particularly loves:

Trouble at the Dinosaur Cafe
Rumpus Jumpus Dinosaurumpus (yes a theme does emerge somewhat with his books!)
Someone Bigger
The Fish Who Could Wish
Fidgety Fish (I think the big BURP makes it particularly popular !)
Gruffalo/Gruffalos Child

Great to get new suggestions from others.

Yes, Lynley Dodd is great - great rhythm & pace

Land of Green Ginger (for 5+)
Beatrix Potter if you cheat & edit a bit
the Ahlbergs, genii
Edward Lear

The worst offender is the Rev Awdry - clunkering-shuddering-screeching to a halt prose & even more leaden morals.

I work in a pre-school so regularly read out loud to a bunch of 2 to 3 year olds. The ones I like best, and keep them engrossed, are:
Fidgety Fish
The Smartest Giant in Town
A squash and a Sneeze
Bob The Man in the Moon
Red Hot Chilli
My Granny is a Juggler

Will ponder this some more.

Monkey Puzzle is a current favourite to read out loud.

DS1 and I have just finished Magic faraway Tree and the Wishing chair by Enid Blyton. I did edit a bit though.

We are now reading Charlie and the Rocket Boy which are in a series.

For littlies:

Room on the Broom - as long as you can handle your toddler gleefully yelling 'Buzz off!' at you at inappropriate moments.

The Baby That Wouldn't Go To Bed - Helen Cooper - lots of opportunities for different voices, car noises, varying tone and pitch, and a lovely book all round. One of the very few that I didn't inwardly groan about when asked to read for the four thousandth night in a row.

This Is The Bear - any, but the very first goes down very well with small children because it has lots of things like bins and smelly dumps that never fail to provoke laughter. There is a fantastic CD from Walker Books as well which has several of these read by people like Bill Oddie and Brian Blessed with music and activity suggestions.

For older kids:

Lemony Snicket - really, really fantastic for reading aloud: great words, so much room for drama (though obviously impossible to touch Tim Curry's performance on the audiobooks).

Lots of poetry.

I loved
Naughty Little Sister
The Hobbit
Lionboy
Inkheart
Alice in Wonderland

Hated
Milly Molly Mandy (turgid)
Narnia (never realised how badly written it was until I read it aloud)
Lord of the Rings (so much more longwinded than the Hobbit)
Emily Windsnap (reading it to DD2 atm and it is not as good as I hoped it would be, full of short sentences with little variation, no pace and lame descriptions.)
Secret Seven (shoot me now if I ever have to read another).

I heartily agree with Louandben, I hate the Awdry books, and the newer books are just as bad. I seriously think that all the railways on Sodor should be shut down as they have an absolutely appalling safety record - there's a crash every day for crying out loud! Still, Sir Topham Hatt and the shareholders must still be raking it in .

I love the Ahlberg books, particularly the now defunct 'Happy Families' range. They were out of print last time I looked, but I have managed to source a few copies from eBay. They are really fun to read and my son will spend ages pouring over the pictures.

only read first line of previous post but I second the Feckin Railway Series, absolute PURGATORY to read aloud and very much twaddle-filled for the most part.

Maurice Sendak is always good, especially Chicken Soup and Rice rhymes

will think of some more

what age group are we talking about

I read aloud to kids (mostly age 2-4) at my DD's preschool and in the local American bookstore on a Sunday morning (I'm in Poland, the US bkstore is the only decent Eng-lang bkshop in town, and it's the centre of a whole community of expats and mixed families, and has loads of other events. And superb brownies).
My favourites are the Julia Donaldson books. Especially the Gruffalo and the G's Child because you can do fab voices, and the Smartest Giant in Town because you can sing bits of it.
I love the Hairy Mclary/Schnitzel von Krumm ones too, and yes, the Big Red Bath.
I'd love to do Roald Dahl (we're just starting it at home, DD1 aged 4) but the kids are a bit small and they don't come every week so chapter books are out. But I have a wonderful book of his verse so must start dipping into that (remember the Centipede's Song from James and the Giant Peach?)
And Seuss (though you have to practise them for public reading)
Oh, and the Tiger who came to Tea - the kids squeal!
For reading to my own there's a nice one called Faraway farm, which has rhyming text that asks the kids to find certain things on the illustrations.
And Russell the Sheep (the kids love to trace around his hat with their fingers)
DD1 is crazy about Milly-M-M but I nearly die every time she asks for it because it's soooo boring. Ditto Bear in the Big Blue House (so badly written)

I think we generally all know which picture books are good to read aloud because we all do that. It is more of an issue when you get on to chapter books.

I have just finished the Magic Faraway Tree which I thought was quite good for reading to DS. Danny the Champion of the World was quite good to read also.

Oooh new book time tonight.

For the younger ones (i.e 2 0r 3 rather than 4), my DD recently LOVED India Knight's 'The baby...but I would have liked a hamster'. There isn't loads of text, so older kids would get through it VERY quickly, but the illustrations are gorgeous, and there is mentions of poo and burps..always a winner!

Yes, agree that it's pretty easy to sort good from bad in picture books.

However, just because they haven't (I think) yet been mentioned, Jez Alborough ("Where's My Teddy?") etc. is great; as is the whole series of Walker "Read & Wonder" books (factual, not stories - really lovely things) - hope this link works for some examples

Re chapter books, I'll have a prowl at home & see if I have any more suggestions. Our chapter book period (ie, me reading to them) was rather short, as ds & dd's own reading took off at about that time (thank to the Walker books above, and Tintin).

We haven't got on to chapter books yet, but I have bought a copy of Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown in readiness for that stage. I'm one of four sisters so a lot of the books I enjoyed are quite girl-orientated. Having had a boy, I am really looking forward to reading some new fiction when the time comes.

Dd adores the Read and Wonder series

Chapter books that beg to be read aloud and not already mentioned include the Clarice Bean novels, Just William and Jennings.

We also had a big success with the touching King of the Copper Mountains, by Paul Biegel.

Dh and ds enjoyed Little Nose (recently reissued) and Stig of the Dump.

Pretty much any Lynley Dodd or Julia Donaldson (Whale and Snail is my favourite - just slips from the tongue).

We are currently doing The Gaskitt family oeuvre - lovely, and fantastic pictures.

DS - 6 - also loves Tintin and reading them together is a great experience. It has definitely enriched his vocabularly!

Flat Stanley ones quite good as well. DS loved Stanley in Space that has several little mini-crises. I can really remember well from my own childhood the thrilling trauma of Mum or Dad stopping reading when you knew that something exciting was about to happen.

I have to say, when I have revisited books from my childhood, I have been slightly disappointed - some have dated quite badly. (I am quite old, LOL). TBH, there is a lot of good stuff out there now.

One of the other mums in a mums group I go to is a children's author and illustrator. When I was talking about some of the old time classics for reading aloud (Where the Wild things are, Peepo, Peace at Last etc.) she had a bit of a dig saying that these are all very old books and that the authors have made a fortune, whereas new authors are struggling to compete and make a living. So she was encouraging me to look for new books which are equally as good to read aloud. I have to say that some of the newer stuff isn't a patch on the older stuff which was read to me as a child (and I'd agree with Jessia on Lynley Dodd - Slinky Malinki is my favourite not least for some of the brilliant words she uses like "pilfered" and "rapscallion" which are great for reading aloud). I'll continue to read the old classics to my son but my friend did have a point.... the best 'newer' stories that I've come across are Where's My Darling Daughter by Mij Kelly and Katherine McKeown as well as William and The Night Train (also by Mij Kelly with Alison Jay) both of which I'd recommend for reading aloud. (Where's my Darling Daughter in particular... you get to don your best farmer's accent! oo aah). That said, I'm sure you've all been through the nightmare of your child adopting a rubbish book as there favourite, regardless of your attempts to steer them towards your own favourites.... much as I love the Miffy illustrations, I am beginning to struggle to read them with much enthusiasm - I don't think they have translated too well from the Dutch! Right, must think of a suitable nickname and learn the art of brevity when posting a message!

I am not ashamed to say that after a few readings I used to chuck my son's Thomas the Tank Engine books down the back of the radiator so he couldn't find them anymore!

NKwhotsit - what a bizarre guilt trip to lay on you. ("How dare you read Dickens, when xxx has just put out their new novel and needs the royalties?")

Terry Jones - Fantastic Stories or Erik the Viking

also Series of Unfortunate Events

Pippi Longstockign

yes Naughty Little Sister and Milly Molly Mandy are both v good

Don 't start me on Thomas the Bleedin' Tank Engine!! My mother-in-law is a collector of tasteless figurines etc. (I'm sure you can picture it!) and she has taken it upon herself to force 'collecting' upon my son so we have Thomas everything, including the dreadful books.... AAAARGH! A psychologist friend of mine jokes that her insistence on making my son (and all her other grandchildren) collectors from birth, will only serve in pushing them all higher up the autistic spectrum. But I shouldn't complain as my son has been staying at said grandma's for the last couple of nights so I've had a well earned rest, although can't wait to see him again later (a feeling which will probably wear off after 10 minutes when I'm feeling run ragged again, lol). Suppose I ought to recommend another book given that's what the threads about... a more recent Ahlberg one (Allan Ahlberg collaborating with someone else... Janet Ahlberg sadly died some years ago) is Miaow (with lift the cat flaps) always goes down well with my son, especially when I sing the Seven Dwarves "hi ho" song like a deranged idiot to pleas of 'again, again'! (moomooface, aka NK2817....)

Well I have read the first chapter of the first Astrosaur book to DS tonight. I thought about going on to the Magic Faraway Tree (after Enchanted Wood) but wanted to give him a taste of something different. It went down quite well but is fairly easy so think he might pick up on reading some of the others himself.

Philip Ardagh - DS1 has one of the Eddie books, can't remember which one, he has only allowed me to read him one chapter out loud but it was great fun (and very funny).

Sir Gadabout.