Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Need book recommendations for a 4 yo....

i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii....

(get the CD and you'll understand )

JB

I will have to check out those CD's. They sound good, that is the kind of stuff we like to listen to. Music that is entertaining for the whole family. I must confess that often times I listen to DS's music after I drop him off and don't even realize it. Especially since For the Kids stuff actually has good artists. And I listened to TMBG as a kid, so don't mind listening to it as an adult.

Ah, JBD, you speak my language!

My dd3 *loves* the little house on the prarie series. At first, I did not think she understood very much of it, but now I think she really does. She was fascinated by the fact that Mary was blind and for a few days that is all she would talk about. It's great b/c its clean, and for the most part, not violent. (Although, there is a bit of talk about guns and hunting for food.) It's also good for those munchkins who are into geography, since you can show the child on a map where the family has been and where they are headed.

I can't remember if Time Warp Trio was in this thread or another, but thanks to whoever recommended them. DS4 loves them! And he just picked up roman numerals from one of them. There was one - "summer reading is killing me" that I would recommend that is apropos to this thread. The Trio gets sent into the summer reading list that includes books from K-8 I think. (It's quite hilarious - the bad characters are trying to eliminate all the good characters, so you find things like dracula dragging peter rabbit somewhere, Mr Twit breaking Harold's Purple Crayon, etc.) The end of the book has the entire book list, by level, which I now realize i should have copied as a reference. So these are books that Jon Scieszka liked. It was especially funny for DS when he recognized the characters, like Ramona or Encyclopedia Brown or the Twits...
summer reading is killing me

Oh - and mom123, Little House on the Prairie gets special treatment in this book as one of the most terrifying books (for the boys, who hadn't read it).

I was a big fan of the Little House series as a kid. But the stuff about Native Americans is worth a conversation. The attitudes in there are pretty bad a lot of the time...Not a reason to stop reading them, I don't think, but definitely worth noting and discussing.

Yes, yes, that is very true - I forgot about that - most of the references to native americans *are* totally offensive- since I usually read the book to her I can skip over those parts - and the parts about killing animals. Now that she reads over my shoulder and says "mom, you did not read this part" - I'm not sure how much longer I can get away with that. If they are reading on them totally their own, some of the books in the series are better on that than others... you might need to skim first.

I completely agree with the Geronimo Stilton books. They're fun! Our DD enjoyed them quite a bit. You might consider stopping by your local elementary school and asking the librarian there for some suggestions. Perhaps he/she would have a list of appropriate level books that then could be highlighted with the books that were felt to be of a more appropriate level for your son's sensitivities.

Good luck! It won't be long and most of your concerns over content will not be quite so concerning.

Ditto to all the books mentioned here. DS has read most of them around that age +/-. Esp. the Magic Tree house series. Another one I have to mention is these books by Louis Sachar:-

Sideway stories from Wayside School
Wayside School is Falling Down
Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger

They are hilarious! We had fun reading them.

When they are older and if they love Math, they will like Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School too!

LOL, anytime I skip a word my
DS lets me know. I could never skip a sentence. It's awkward when I am reading something that I don't think is appropriate or says things like "stupid" or whatever. If I skip over it it will draw more attention to it in his mind.

He was in his pre-k class the other day and I decided to observe. The teacher read "10 apples up on top" to the class. She kept skipping the word "up" and DS kept saying "it's UP on top...UP" He must have said it 5 times, not sure if anyone heard him. He eventually gave up.