Here is a list of books that you may enjoy reading to your children.  These are wonderful books, and can be enjoyed at bedtime or perhaps listened to on audiobook for car commutes.  Please don’t allow these to encroach on time spent outside.

These books are completely optional and not part of the curriculum.  If your children are not ready for read-alouds, if they are too wiggly, if they think that hearing stories at bedtime really means it’s time to play and swing from their bunk beds, it’s ok to wait or skip them completely.     Please don’t feel any guilt for not being able to fit these into your evening.  The list is for informational purposes only, and the choice is yours whether or not to use them.

If you or your child don’t like a book after reading two or three chapters, move on to something else.  There are too many excellent books out there to waste time reading ones that don’t appeal to you.

Simpler books for the youngers (some duplicates from the 6 and Under page)

  • Blueberries for Sal (and any others by Robert McCloskey)
  • Stone Soup
  • Where the Wild Things Are
  • Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
  • Courduroy
  • Bedtime for Francis
  • The Littles
  • Mike Mulligan
  • My Father’s Dragon
  • Jenny and the Cat Club
  • The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton
  • The Story of Dr Doolittle (Books of Wonder version)
  • Elsa Beskow
    • Peter in Blueberry Land
    • Ollie’s Ski Trip (winter)
    • Children of the Forest
    • Pelle’s New Suit
  • The Tomten by Astrid Lindgren
  • Children of Noisy Village (can be used as a geography replacement for 1B)
  • Michael Ende – Jim Button series
  • The Story of the Root Children by Sybille von Offers

Slightly more difficult, for IA

  • The Bears on Hemlock Mountain
  • The Hundred Dresses
  • The Enchanted Wood
  • Wizard of Oz
  • Borrowers series
  • Owls in the Family
  • Charlotte’s Web
  • A Bear Called Paddington
  • Little House in the Big Woods
  • Farmer Boy
  • Little House on the Prairie
    [note: some don’t like Little House due to the portrayal of Native Americans.  Big Woods and Farmer Boy should be fine.  Discuss with your children, or simply skip Little House]
  • Mr. Poppers Penguins
  • The Boxcar Children
  • The Wind in the Willows
  • The Enormous Egg by Butterworth
  • The Saturdays by Enright
  • Moffat series by Eleanor Estes
  • Five Children and It series by Nesbit
    — Any book by Nesbit really
  • Half Magic by Edward Eager
  • Pippi Longstocking
  • The Twenty One Balloons by William Pene du Bois
  • Ginger Pye [this is a book that people either love or hate because of the writing style]
  • The Jungle Book
  • Swallows and Amazons
  • Redwall
  • Peter Pan
  • The Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

An excellent website for more ideas is Read Aloud Dad.  We love it not only for the book recommendations, but also for advice and tips on how to slowly bring your children to read alouds.

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