Comment by numbsafari

Comment by numbsafari 5 days ago

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This year:

- I read the entire “Frog & Toad” collection. Probably about 30 times, some stories more.

- “Little Shrew’s Day”… probably 25 times.

- Many of the “Construction Site” series books, especially the OG “Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site”. The “Garbage Crew” and “Airport” books featured heavily.

- Started to mix in some “Pete the Cat” titles.

- “Detective Dog Nell” got a lot of air play.

Lots of others, but those are definitely the frequent fliers.

cpfohl 5 days ago

If Little Blue Truck isn’t on your regular list you should add it. We also loved Pond by Jim LaMarche (older audience, but beautifully illustrated and told), the Boynton books are fun to read aloud especially Barnyard Dance, and The Going to Bed Book. There are more, but these are the highlights from that age range

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  • wj 5 days ago

    Napping House and Pokey Little Puppy were two of my favorites to read with my kids along with the Little Blue Truck.

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Popeyes 4 days ago

We went to America to see some family and we were discussing books and we were shocked that they had never heard of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler who are an absolute staple of UK kids book culture (so much so that they adapt one of her books as animations for each Christmas). So if they aren't on your radar, then they come highly recommended.

https://axelscheffler.com/who-is-he https://www.juliadonaldson.co.uk/books/

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mcswell 4 days ago

Back in the day, I read the Berenstein Bears more times than I wished (my wish would have been zero times), to my kids who are probably about the same age as you.

It was such a relief when I could start reading them the Narnia Chronicles, and much later Lord of the Rings.

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  • jimmydddd 4 days ago

    Surely you mean the Berenstain Bears. --Just a shout out from the alternate universe before we split off.

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  • sejje 3 days ago

    I've always thought it seemed early, but in my first grade class we read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe aloud as a group.

    I don't really remember us having much trouble. I was hooked, and I read the whole series by third grade. I had trouble finding a couple of them, which held me up.

    I got into many other books those years. My Friend Flicka, Black Beauty. The Hobbit. White Fang, Hatchet. The Forest Runners. Where the Red Fern Grows.

    Still some of my favorites on that list. They really shaped my life, actually.

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heyitsdaad 4 days ago

Frog & Toad is a grown up book disguised as children’s book. I very much enjoyed reading it to my boys.

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rkuska 4 days ago

I would recommend The Children of Noisy Village, my 3 year old loves it (she didn't like Pippi Longstocking) and we've read all chapters from all the books several times already.

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etrautmann 4 days ago

Are you me? Glad others have this exact experience

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  • EvanAnderson 4 days ago

    Similar experience w/ my daughter (now 12 y/o) here. We read the heck out of children's books when she was little. There were nights when I really didn't want to slog thru the same Suzy Spafford[6] book again, but I did it anyway. I think it paid off. My daughter is an avid reader now.

    She says she still wants me to read to her, so I do. This year was a bit sci-fi heavy, and we've decided to target more fantasy and literature in 2026.

    This year's books included:

    "Below the Root", "And All Between", and "Until the Celebration" - The "Green Sky Trilogy"[0] by Zilpha Keatly Snyder. We held off on playing the "Below the Root" video game[1] but I'm hoping that as we get into winter weather and outside time becomes more scarce we can get to it. It's arguably the final book in the "trilogy".

    "Redshirts"[2] by John Scalzi. We've been slowly making our way through Star Trek TOS in the last couple years so. That gave her enough cultural fluency with the tropes in the book to make it effective.

    "To Say Nothing of the Dog"[3] by Connie Willis. My daughter adores Victorian England and comedy. This book also turned her on to Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)"[4] (which I'm still working thru on my own-- I do not particularly love Victorian England but it is a good book).

    Besides the books I read to my daughter, I also read Martha Wells' "The Murderbot Diaries"[5] series myself. I'm vaguely interested in the television adaptation. I'd love to hear what somebody who has read the series thinks of the TV version.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Sky_Trilogy

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Sky_Trilogy

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirts_(novel)

    [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Say_Nothing_of_the_Dog

    [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Men_in_a_Boat

    [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murderbot_Diaries

    [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzy_Spafford

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    • vintagedave 4 days ago

      I read the series and have really enjoyed the TV show. It felt like it was made for fans (the portrayal of the embedded show, Sanctuary Moon, was wonderful and I felt like whoever did their hairstyles had an immense amount of fun), yet accessible without knowing the story. Murderbot’s self-narration was good; I wanted more since it drove so much of the book but what was there in the show carried its personality well.

      Alexander Skarsgard pulled the character off well. My mental picture of Murderbot from the books was very different but now when I re-read the first book after watching the show, I heard his voice. I still feel slightly sad they didn’t get a more genderless or gender-ambivalent actor (he looks male, the bot was agender before the show) or tried to portray him differently… they could have reduced this but the way they filmed him assigns gender to an ungendered character.

      The other actors were all excellent too. I felt far more of a sense of them as a team and individuals than I remember from the first book.

      If you enjoyed the books I think you’ll enjoy the show, except for me that it has changed my picture of Murderbot and I am not sure for the better, in terms of what I felt were social / identity values the books encouraged.

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      • EvanAnderson 4 days ago

        Thanks for the analysis. I've been reading it with a thought toward how I might've adapted it for video. The narration seemed incredibly challenging (and kept making me think of "A Christmas Story", of all things). The integration of "Sanctuary Moon" sounds particularly fun.

        I definitely see Murderbot as genderless and seeing it as gendered is going to be weird. Fortunately, the series isn't particularly "dear" to me and I think I can deal with the trauma of having my mental pictures wiped-out by somebody else's.

        (There are properties like "Neuromancer" and "Snow Crash" that I hope are never adapted to video and, if they are, I will steadfastly refuse to ever see, because I can't imagine anybody else's mental pictures will be better than mine...)

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        • vintagedave 3 days ago

          Yeah, I have solid mental images of both those books too, and I'd be really hesitant to watch any version of them for fear they'd be too... generic? Not that it's someone else's vision (for me), just that it would be Netflix/Hollywood Cyber Slash Noir. I can't imagine anything worse than them looking like every other set-in-the-future adaptation.

          I've never seen "A Christmas Story" (Wikipedia shows it as very American-cultural-icon) but reading the synopsis, I'm surprised how many parts of it are semi-familiar, perhaps culturally reflected in other ways. It'll go on the to-watch list. And looking forward to the narration!

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cevn 4 days ago

I rly like construction site one. Spotting the lil red bird became a game for us.

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