Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Books!!!!!

Ok, here goes (I visited the attic) --

The Book of Beasts, by E. Nesbit, abridged & illustrated by Inga Moore
The Reluctant Dragon, by Kenneth Grahame, abridged & illustrated by Inga Moore
The Great Blueness, by Arnold Lobel
The Fire Cat (and other cat stories), by Esther Averill
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, by Janet & Allan Ahlberg
The Brothers Wrong and Wrong Again, by Louis Phillips
Sheep in Wolves' Clothing, by Satoshi Kitamura
The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf
Meanwhile, Bark George, by Jules Feiffer
Sir Cedric et al. by Roy Gerrard (great illustrations)
The Remarkable Farkle McBride, Micawber, by John Lithgow
Matilda, by Hilaire Belloc, illustrated by Posy Simmonds
The Shrinking of Treehorn, The Problem with Pulcifer, by Florence Parry Heide
The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear, illustrated by Jan Brett
The Curious Little Owl, by Frances Ruth Keller
The Last Basselope, by Berkeley Breathed (of Bloom County fame)

Some are probably out of print; I found most of our kids' books at library book sales and used-book stores.

We can proceed to chapter books if you'd like....

DD2 is really into Franklin the Turtle, and *ahem* Star Wars. You know a girl has older brothers when...

She also likes her Dora Look and Find book, which she is growing out of, so I'll be pulling out her brother's old I Spy books sometime soon, but not yet.

Star wars Maybe I should pull out Hitchhikers' guide

For chapter books, DS mostly is only a little interested, he likes it when we read them to him at bedtime, but he's not really into it in the same way... I think he has the sence that it's all one story, and he really gets into the characters, I think he's comforted by them returning time after time, and he remembers chunks of storyline here and there. But mostly we just read what we like that's going to be long and consistent/comforting enough to encourage sleep. Some math textbooks included

Hmm: new question: He's 2 & 1/52, I don't really know when kids get really able to follow long sequenced (ie: not totally episodic) stories -- any comments on that? Norms for Avg Kids is useful, or connections to related milestones maybe better, something like "about when they start having imaginary friends" (we still don't really know if DS is "gifted" just guessing based on him being wierd, having a lot of knowledge/understanding already, and having two giftie parents. I'm also kinda not sure when/why I get to start being convinced he's genuinely unusual. Sigh.)

-Mich (who might just take him to the bookstore today...)

My kids love Hitchhiker's Guide! If you use audiobooks, check out the one for Hitchhikers -- it's read by Stephen Fry, who is perfect for the job.

Re milestones, I can give you our experience with ds as a data point. At 3.5 he asked me to read him Ramona the Pest -- not sure why (maybe he liked the cover art). I figured he'd lose interest pretty quickly, but we finished it in under a week, and from then on most of the books I read to him were chapter books: Charlotte's Web, Wizard of Oz, Narnia et al.

DD won't sit through chapter books but she loves long stories at bed times. We'll tell stories from the Bible or stories about her life/our lives and they can be pretty long and she'll still enjoy them. She asks questions about them and wants to be retold her favorite ones often. However, if we sit down a read a chapter book to her she'll lose interest quickly and shut it. Ironically she keeps asking for them, though, and many time will take one of DH or my text books off of the shelf and will asked to be read from them.

Oh, and she's a young 2.

My girls loved the Sandra Boynton books as young toddlers. At two, DD#1 memorized our collection and would sit in the rocking chair "reading" them to her baby sister. They also really enjoyed Dr. Seuss.

When they were about preschool age, Berenstain Bears and Magic School Bus were favorites.

I started reading Harry Potter to them when they were three and five. Both girls were more than willing to sit and listen to a chapter a night. I only read the first three books at that age though. I was worried that the content was getting too old and scary for them.

Hmm. Ok, so maybe we should be expecting something vaguely like 3ish for the chapter books thing... Or maybe not

Newmom21c: sounds like yours and mine are on the sameish page, anyway! DS has been particularly interested in one of my stats textbooks, which he goes 'round the house hugging & trying to get the visitors to read to him (many of them are mathematicians, so many of them are... amused... If he starts doing linear regressions by the age of x, I certainly won't be able to say I don't know where he got it from <giggle>)

Ooo. I just like thinking about books. It makes me happy. I'm such a crazy person.


-Mich

DS was like this for a while. He loved me to read ANYTHING to him, just as long as it was an interesting-sounding story, preferably with good dialogue so I'd inflect my voice in a more varied manner. I read him Harry Potter. He used to gently doze off listening to it. So sweet.

He kind of grew back into short picture books, though. Now that the content of the story matters more to him, we had to go back to things that are not just within the limits of his attention span, but also within the limits of his frame of reference. He'd rather listen to more concrete stories (magic and such being a little too abstract and outside his personal experience) at this point, whereas about a year ago, he'd listen to pretty much whatever, as long as we presented it in an interesting way.

Books DS picked over and over at 2-3 include,

Carter, Bugs books
Rathman, 10 Minutes till Bedtime, Goodnight Gorilla
Dunrea, Gossie books
McPhail, Bug, Bear, Boy books
All things Boynton, including Snoozers, Philadelphia Chickens, Dog Train (though we never listened to the CDs!)
Fo, Hush
Bateman, Deep in the Swamp
Opie+Wells, My Very First Mother Goose
Frank, Poems to Read to the Very Young (may be out of print)
All things Fleming, In the Small Small Pond
Sendak, Nutshell Library
Blathwayt, Little Red Train compilation
lots of Seuss, but a fav was Oh, the Thinks you can Think!

At 2/3 dd was into
Boyton
Babar books
The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher (totally weird book)
at 3 and 4 suddenly she wanted all the 'information books' on space I could get my hands on...
now she has gone around the twist for HEROES. super heroes of any kind, so we are on easy readers and some comics.

At 2 ds(now 10) was very into
Thomas books (we had a large set and they were in constant rotation)
Gaga for Boyton (esp. pajama time & going to bed book)
Nursery Rhymes, especially the huge Rosemary Wells book in red...that thing got nightly use, I can still probably recite 75% of it in order by memory.
Almost any book was just a delight to him.

Later on (4/5-ish) he dug captain underpants, and I would read the Harry Potter books to him which he LOVED.