Bedtimes stories
Some we have loved
Recent pieces by Henry Oliver and Erik Hoel have sent me back to our children’s bookshelves. Which books have we loved reading to the children at bedtime and why?
Hoel maintains that a certain type of children’s book has been retired:
And in The Big Chair we read mostly old books together. Things good for the soul. They are old simply because this genre—a longer chapter book, with beautiful illustrations, designed to be read aloud and enjoyed across a wide range of ages—is basically extinct. Modern analogs to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Wind in the Willows or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz just don’t seem to get published anymore. It’s like an entire genre (now sometimes called “read-aloud books” or, tellingly, “classic children’s literature”), a genre that once ruled parts of publishing, a genre that is still beloved today, and the only genre that fills a very specific role, just… ceased to be added to.
I know the sort he means, though I am less convinced of its extinction. The more recent of the works listed below were much better experiences than the heavy weather we made of some classics like Alice in Wonderland.
Looking through the bookshelves, I was struck by how immediate my reaction was to certain titles: a massive spontaneous yawn (The Famous Five) or that warm afterglow you feel at the memory of an old friend or carefree holiday.
These latter are the ones I wanted to list here, as a counterpoint to all the doom and gloom about falling rates of reading and in the hope that they may be useful to newer parents or teachers. (But mainly for my own sake, because it was fun and so that, when the memories fade, I can pull out this list and say to Izzy, awash with tears, don’t you remember? — “it is with bitter regret that I inform you I may not come out to eat ice-creams today!”)
If I were to try to say what most of these books have in common, I’d include:
Their irresistible language. They are always easy - and sometimes a real pleasure - to read aloud, and read again. Dahl is the master, of course. He never minds repeating words if it makes a passage easier to read.
They rarely ‘write down’ to children. Henry is spot on — “Barrie takes no pains to make his writing childishly simple. He writes like he is talking directly to children, the great author who happens to be in the room with you.” Or Charlotte Mason —
“[Children] must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told.”
There is something fresh, lively, vital about them. You may be tired but they pick your spirits up. Even if they were written decades ago, their themes endure. Mason again —
A book may be long or short, old or new, easy or hard, written by a great man or a lesser man, and yet be the living book which finds its way to the mind of a young reader.
Why in the world should we not give children…the sort of books they can live upon; books alive with thought and feeling, and delight in knowledge?
In many of them there is what C S Lewis called “the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.” Henry captures this feeling so beautifully in his essay:
[We parents] “get to hear [our] little ones gasp and gurgle while [we] take a nostalgic pleasure in that delight…all the while the reading parent pines for time lost, time they cannot hope to regain.”
It is an intricate nostalgia as we often remember not just our own childhoods but our being read the same stories, entering our own Neverlands via our own parents. It must be almost unbearable to read the same stories to your grandchildren that you read to your children.
~
What would you add to this list? Message me or leave it in the comments. I have many still unread on the bookshelves that I am happy to add to. I have a fatal weakness for charity shops.
First Books: 0-2 years old
Angela Banner, Ant and Bee
Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon
Beatrix Potter, Peter Rabbit; Mr Tod; Flopsy Bunnies; Jeremy Fisher; Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.
Roger Hargreaves, Mr Men
Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Peepo; Each Peach Pear Plum; The Jolly Postman
Michael Rosen, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt
Amy MacDonald, Little Beaver and The Echo
Mariesa Dulak and Rebecca Cobb, There’s a Tiger on the Train
Julia Donaldson, Room on the Broom; Zog; Gruffalo’s books; Snail and the Whale; Monkey Puzzle; A Squash and a Squeeze; Highway Rat; Tabby McTat; Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book; The Smartest Giant in Town.
Pre-school books: 2-5 years old
Emma Chichester Clark, Piper
Judith Kerr, How Mrs Monkey Missed The Ark; The Mog books; The Tiger Who Came to Tea
Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees, Giraffes Can’t Dance
Edward Ardizzone, Little Tim Books
Shirley Hughes, esp Alfie Books; Dogger Books; Enchantment in the Garden
Raymond Briggs, Snowman Books; The Bear; The Man; Father Christmas
Jill Murphy, Large Family books
Allan and Janet Ahlberg, Funnybones; Burglar Bill
Anthony Browne, Gorilla; The Tunnel; Willy & Hugh; Into the Forest
Enid Blyton, The Faraway Tree Collection
Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio
Nick Butterworth, Percy the Park Keeper
Quentin Blake, Mister Magnolia; Cockatoos
Don Freeman, Fly High Fly Low
Alastair Chisholm and David Roberts, Inch and Grub
Treasuries & Collections
Puffin’s Stories for Under 4s and Under 5s. Top recommend - almost every one a banger. Sara and Stephen Corrin are clearly genius collectors.
Puffin Classics, English Fairy Tales
Usborne, Greek Myths
Usborne, Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales (and Grimm’s too!)
Puffin’s Treasury of Classics
First School Years: 5-7 years old
Tony Ross and Tony Bradman, Robin Hood; William Tell; King Arthur; Shipwrecked
Meg McKinlay and Matt Ottley, How to Make a Bird
Ben Manley and Emma Chichester Clark, The Misadventures of Frederick
Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Fantastic Mr Fox; Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator; Danny, the Champion of the World; The Twits; George’s Marvellous Medicine; The BFG; Esio Trot
Wonderful list. Found myself slightly emotional just reading it! Takes me straight to that glorious Beatrix Potter quote:
‘What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood?’
Patrick by Quentin Blake, Possum Magic by Mem Fox and Where the Wild things are. And Kings and Queens poems by the Farjeons for the slightly older