Which is your most hated book for reading aloud to your DCs

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It has to be almost any of the Mr Men books, for me. They are unreadable. I seriously doubt that anyone bothered to read them aloud at any point during the editorial process (a criticism that could be leveled at any number of books published today too.)Reading them aloud is like the verbal equivalent of walking barefoot over broken bricks.

Come on, dish the dirt. Which ones really make your heart sink when your child hands them to you to read out?

yy topsy and tim, yawn tastic and terribly sexist.

Glad to see we're all in good company. Our fireman sam has been written by someone who had their personality permanently removed. Haven't yet resorted to burning it, but it is definitely going to disappear before ds2 is old enough :)

Animal Boogie Woogie - I cant even get my lips round it

My dm kindly bought dd a few of those Letterland books.

They made me want to stick pins in my eyes.

George's Marvellous Medicine - full of mean characters & the concoction sounded disgusting. Ditto 'the twits' - the description of the dried up food in Mr Twit's beard made me feel sick! But, guess what, my kids loved it! :)

I don't like the Twits or George's Marvellous Medicine either. Unpleasant and grotesque characters. Roald Dahl obviously had a thing about a) women and b) fat people.

We're onto James & the Giant Peach now which is better but still has unpleasant women and fat people in it

I know. At times I found myself slightly editing the mean bits so they weren't so horrible.

I love reading Topsy and Tim, especially the old-fashioned editions! They're not 'sexist' as such - that's how things were in those days. A good lesson in social history!

I absolutely refuse to read Rainbow frigging Magic. Luckily dd can now read them to herself.

One called 'Ant and Bee Go Shopping'
It is excruciating to read. Money is described as 'money coins' throughout.

My older sister bought it for my DD1 as revenge for the earlier edition which she had been forced to read to me repeatedly as a child (she was 9 years older). Revenge was indeed sweet and I have now removed the book from the general book shelf now that DD2 is old enough to be read it in theory

this is the offending article

Mine are older now, but Henny Penny and the like used to drive me loopy.

that squash and a squeeze book....my house is a squash and a squeeze...blah blah blah

We're going on a fecking bear hunt. I jumble saled that quick as a flash. Utter bollocks.

Dm used to hate reading the Ant and Bee stories. we used to choose them from the library deliberately.

I find the worst books for reading out loud are those that have lots of dialogue. they can be brilliant stories read to yourself, but just don't read out well very well. i loved Wish for a Pony, but found it really hard to read out loud. Didn't stop dd1 still wanting a pony though.

You Choose we ended up hiding it after reading it day and night for weeks and it takes forever with all the options and discussions. Don't get me wrong it is a great book for talking about with your little ones but it gets tiring trying to choose different each time!!!

Charlie & Lola for me - perhaps I just picked up a couple of bad stories? Whatever it was, I was tripping over every other sentence. And Thomas the Tank Engine, which bores the pants off of me

Wow, just opened this thread and discovered I posted on it 6 years ago! I would just like to inform you that things do get better - the DD1 referred to in my post in now 10, and we're just finishing reading Anne of the Island (third in the Anne of Green Gables books) and I have loved every minute of reading it to her

Any Barbie book. They are utter drivel. All the stories seem the same and the quality is so poor that they seem to fall apart almost instantly. I refuse to let dd bring them home from the library now.

I have the original Thomas books and am happy to read them. The recent ones in the big boxed set are terrible though.

Can't believe no one has mentioned The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark - it just goes on forever!

Also hate any Disney book which is basically a description of the movie - they never make any sense. Just 'and then Alice saw this, and then Alice went here, and then Alice did that'

Went through a phase of hating "you choose" as well because they always had to discuss all the bloody options on every page and argue about who was having the princess bed etc.

Also dislike Owl Babies - especially the bit "baby owls think a lot" - so annoying!

Finally "little miss stubborn" is just drivel

We have some Waybuloo books which are fucking terrible.
And Mr Men. Dd thinks she likes them because the front covers appeal (plus dmil does some hard sell on them by buying special new ones called Little Miss Pink Sparkly Fairy Princess, just to rile me). But when we actually start reading them she is bored after about two sentences.

Tipsy and Tim books, which were invariably lost by me So twee and absolutely ghastly.

Topsy, for goodness' sake, Tipsy might have been more interesting.

Mr Men books are great, you are obviously not doing enough voices or expression if you aren't enjoying them.

The worst are Thomas the tank books, or anything adapted from a disney film.

I quite like the Mr Men books. But can't stand Thomas the Tank engine also the Angelina Ballerina books are too long for bed time and for young DDs attention span.