Children's Books discussion

Here's a place where we can discuss specific books, series, or comparisons of books published before 2010. The date is completely arbitrary, if you end up posting about newer books here, you won't hear about it from me.

I've always loved the books by Enid Blyton.

She wrote stories of various lengths, which are suitable for children of various ages, from toddlers and pre-schoolers, to middle grade readers, and beyond.

My favourites are The Faraway Tree Stories, and a couple of stories of hers I remember reading as part of short story collections. One was "A Bit Of Blue Sky" and the other .. I think the title was "Snubby No Tail" or something like that; the first was about how you can tell if it will be a nice day by whether or not there's enough blue sky to make a pair of trousers for a sailor, and the second was about a guinea pig who was concerned because he didn't have a tail.

I think some of her stories actually belong in the "classics" section, but I'm not 100% sure if that's the case, nor whether that applies to all her books. Especially since I know of a couple of people who haven't ever heard of Enid Blyton's books.

How about you? Have you heard of her books?

If you have, then have you read any of them? If so, which ones? Did you enjoy them?

I never read Blyton's work, Tori. But it looks good. I'll take a look.

My 10 year old son and I shared "Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway?" a couple of weeks ago. (we read 1 chapter each). I was a great read. I wasn't expecting that. It's all written in dialogue form and old radio shows "transcriptions". First Avi's book I read. We are reading now Who Stole the Wizard of Oz?.

I think at's great how you read with your kids, and take it in turns like that.

We do a lot of read-aloud here, as you can guess. Not only me, but my oldest kids like to read to the little ones too, that is something really cute to see.
The particular case of my 10 years old is that he says he hates to read, and reading 30 minutes a day is a penitence. These are his words! I tried everything including graphic novels, animal books, zombies, "chose your own adventure"... Nothing seemed to work.
A few months ago I read Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever by Mem Fox. She says there that we should read aloud to our kids as long as they like to hear us reading. The truth is that I read aloud to them until they prefer to read by themselves ("like big people do"), that is around 6 or 7 years old. They usually don't ask to be read aloud anymore. After reading Mem Fox's book I started reading aloud to him. I proposed him to read one chapter each, and is working SO good! He is loving it. He asks for "just one more chapter". So I plan to go on reading to him until he is 40. :)

Sandra wrote: "We do a lot of read-aloud here, as you can guess. Not only me, but my oldest kids like to read to the little ones too, that is something really cute to see.
The particular case of my 10 years old i..."

Awww! It's always so cute watching little ones try to act like adults.

I'm nearly 31, and I still love to be read to. ;)

I wrote a blog post about books before 2010 compared to books published after: http://www.carriecharleybrown.com/ref...

Interesting post...