Diana Wynne Jones is definitely going to appeal to Potter fans. (And is, for my money, far superior.) Any of her stuff, really, but start him off on the Chrestomanci books (Charmed Life, Witch Week etc).
I love Postwar like a bachelor uncle, but its one paragraph treatment of punk is pure comedy.
Witch Week has some emotionally intense stuff, which is why I've been holding off, but DWJ is a great suggestion!
4: true, but Harry Potter has, I believe, plenty of people being actually killed, tortured etc...
Everything I really liked seems a little old for five, including the DWJ books. But so does Harry Potter, so what do I know. Not fantasy, exactly, but the Just So Stories are fantastic read-alouds, and I think only one, possibly two, of them need censorship.
"The Dark Lord of Derkholm" is I think her best, but you have to have read quite a bit of what it's satirising (high fantasy) to appreciate it...
After having some real duds, Pippi Longstocking is going really great for the 5 and 7 year old. The humor is just right, the language is complex and interesting, the action is immediate.
Nothing like you're asking, though. Zero plot.
My head went to the original Earthsea trilogy, but you can't say it's not dark. But it might be the sort of thing that wouldn't disturb a little kid, because it would go over their heads. (I also have some issues with it, but if I didn't read anything I had issues with, I'd never read anything.)
Lloyd Alexander -- The Chronicles of Prydain. Violence and death in a medieval kind of way, but I don't think it'd disturb a kid who could handle Harry Potter. And excellent. (He also has a whole lot of one-offs which are also good.)
I don't disagree, ajay! I know I'm much more limited than most here who read bedtime stories.
If he's old enough to appreciate Harry Potter, he'll probably appreciate Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin. But you knew that.
"The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle" and related are pitched about right for that age.
Not exactly what you were asking for, but The Phantom Tollbooth was a really good readaloud.
LB got there first. Yes it has its dark side; but the good end well and the bad end badly, as Oscar put it.
I would have thought some of the Potter stuff would be too dark for five, but while my wife has turned the cruciatus curse into the tickling curse, he seems untroubled by death and dementors.
Next week: five-year-old murders family while they sleep.
Obvious, but The Hobbit? Reading The Lord of The Rings aloud seems insanely tedious to me, but The Hobbit was doable.
On the 'dark' front, literal Grimm's Fairy Tales?
We had a fairly rough edition, with all the mutilation and death. Sally had an English teacher try to blow their minds by explaining how grisly the original fairy tales were, and saying "Obviously, no one would give a child anything like that to read." And Sally's waving her hand saying "Me, me, I read the ones where the stepsisters cut their toes off to fit into the glass slipper and then got their eyes plucked out by birds!"
Earthsea FTW, forever. The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper. Actually a lot carier than Potter for my money, but less graphically bloody. Alan Garner Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Moon of Gomrath. T. H. White, Sword in the Stone, PG advised for later volumes.
The Hobbit is something that I found really hard to read aloud.
Sword in the Stone, yes. Not the later books yet.
The problem with the Hobbit was too many dwarves. Trying to differentiate twelve dwarfy sounding voices left me coughing like a two-pack a day smoker. And didn't work very well.
(My children, unfortunately, noticed that I can only really do one voice other than my own. It can be softer or louder, but that's about it.)
His Dark Materials maybe. AFAICR not much more messed up than the later Potters.
When I was a bit older than him I was reading David Eddings, whose books are all allegory for things that don't matter anymore.
One of my favorite Le Guin sentences: "Because I had three children, I have read the Lord of the Rings aloud three times." You have a duty, Ogged. Hobbit too.
If you don't mind the Christian propaganda, Narnia? They're well-suited for reading aloud.
"The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle" and related are pitched about right for that age.
I read these to my kid on Moby's recommendation. They were a big hit.
The C.s of Narnia, if you want him to grow up to be diffident, paralyzed by guilt, affectionate toward animals but noncommittal with respect to people, etc. tall, handsome, ripped to shreds, charming, generous and a master of the martial arts. Sort of a combination of Saint Francis and Steven Seagal, is the takeaway here.
Also Lloyd Alexander, T.H. White, that Wolves of Willoughby Chase lady.
Anyone with kids have an opinion about those Rick Riordan mythology series?
The C.s of Narnia
The Gospel according to St. Mark is shorter, better written and covers much the same ground.
These I never did read aloud, and I don't think I ever talked my kids into reading them, and they might be a little challenging, but E. Nesbit's books? Oh, damn, I'm going over them and they're probably too racist to read anymore. Not malicious, so much, but 'redskins', 'natives', that kind of thing. Damn. I liked those a lot.
That's something that really depresses me. I don't mind losing books where I read it and think "Your views on race were an important moral failure". But the kind of thing where it's more "You were ignorantly condescending exactly like anyone else in your era, and if you lived in a different time you would have known better and would have been fine" but the book is still sort of too bad to hand to a kid, that's lousy.
31: Anyone with kids have an opinion about those Rick Riordan mythology series?
Super dumb, but Newt liked them until he got too sophisticated for them, when he was about ten.
If you are willing to edit out certain ... pre-21st century words, attitudes and opinions, or to buy the bowdlerized versions, the original, pre-Eddie Murphy Dr. Doolittle books, the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books and Booth Tarkington's Penrod books did my brother and me no harm.
32: This seems to entirely miss the point. The Gospels don't have talking horsies.
31: Anyone with kids have an opinion about those Rick Riordan mythology series?
"Super dumb" covers it. Don't read them aloud because there are a shit-ton of them and that means you will have to keep reading them for a very long time.
Rosemary Sutcliffe in general, but probably not yet. Tons of gore.
They didn't take off with my kids, and I only read the first one, but the Diane Duane "So You Want To Be A Wizard" books are well thought of, and I liked the one I read. Harry Potterish, but American, and less silly.
Not malicious, so much, but 'redskins', 'natives', that kind of thing. Damn. I liked those a lot.
I feel like you can just have a frank conversation about this sort of thing, as it comes up, if the book has enough otherwise redeeming features. I mean, they get a lot of problematic stuff in every day life that you have to talk about anyway. (Why were all the characters in that graphic novel white? Why are all the minions boys? Why was it racist for those people to pretend to do the Indian Dance with clapping their mouth and waving their hands? etc.)
If "Super Dumb" isn't a disqualification, the "Spirit Animal" series was well received by the intended audience and hated by the adults who had to read it. It's the literary equivalent of McDonald's.
When the Potters run out, the Alexandra Quick fanfic series, four finished novels, for my money better than Rowling's. A lot darker though.
I can't believe I'm giving up on E. Nesbit and then recommending Kipling (and pretty far afield from Harry Potter), but the Just So Stories and The Jungle Books need less censorship than you might think, and are fantastic to read aloud. I never tried to read Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies aloud, but they might work okay as well.
Not really off-topic, but a different bleg from the original, so I waited until 40: nonfiction vacation recommendations? I leave next Wednesday for the county people still get convicted for lese-majeste, and already have a big fiction list. Something accessible on socialist movements, maybe?
41: Yeah, that might be enough to save the E, Nesbit books. For those, you'd want to start with Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet, and only go further if you liked those. (Oh, actually, she's got some books of short stories too, which would be okay.)
My mom read Puck of Pook's Hill aloud and it worked for me. Before I forget, have people read Le Guin's Lavinia? Because it's fucking great, possibly her best ever.
You can read Edward Eager books that always mention how great E. Nesbit books are and go from there, too. We may need some Bastables soon but I'm not sure I can read without laughing.
I don't know why all the books I loved as a kid were Christian propaganda. But The Princess And The Goblin, and The Princess and Curdie, by George MacDonald? Certainly scary, but I think at the thrilling for a little kid rather than genuinely disturbing level.
48: Oh, I meant to mention those. I never liked them, but I have a reliable friend who adored them, so my dislike is idiosyncratic.
but the Just So Stories and The Jungle Books need less censorship than you might think
If you omit How the Leopard Got its Spots entirely.
I endorse 49! And just about everything else mentioned here.
I'm not sure I can read without laughing.
And this is a problem because?
What about Mary Poppins? Those are super weird.
Chitty-chitty-bang-bang, come to think, is maybe the closest I can think of to the joky-silly Britishness of the Harry Potter books.
51: Yeah, and I'm not sure about How The Rhinoceros Got His Coat.
Mary Poppins works well aloud and the non-racist version has a note so you know you've got the right one.
Oh, huh, those I either read the non-racist version when I was a kid, or missed it completely.
Ask your mom. We all want to know how obvious you were as a child.
It really would be a shame if we had to consign Nesbit to the fire on account of an errant scalping or two. If she'd been writing just a couple decades earlier it wouldn't even have been anachronistic.
What about Edward Eager? Are there minstrels in Half-Magic?
Getting more modern -- Suzanne Collins, who wrote The Hunger Games, had a series for younger kids called Gregor the Overlander. I didn't read them, but the kids ate them up. Pretty darn dark, though.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is fun to ride out loud. You should say "Drugs are bad!" to your kid between chapters.
Post-Pippi Longstocking, reading His Dark Materials with my 6 1/2 year-old right now. She's *just* ready for it but she's also young for her age. Boyf's 9-yo sits in sometimes too. Philip Pullman is, I believe, a twerp, but we don't discuss that.
Or read. It would be good to read as well.
45: Old, but a good read: Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station.
HDM was interesting as specifically anti-Christian propaganda. Like, anyone religious telling their kids not to read Harry Potter is a loon. If I were seriously Christian, though, I think I'd be offended by HDM.
Also The Dark is Rising series and some of the Wrinkle in Time books, Adult Meg is sort of insufferable in the later ones.
In a used bookstore, I found a version of the King Arthur stories John Steinbeck. I read some of it as a bedtime story, but it didn't go over well. The modernization didn't go far enough to make it easy to read and it was really dark.
65 yes v much the anti-Narnia. On purpose I think. Not worried about it being too coercive because both kids decided they didn't believe in God this year (though of course totally unquestioning loyalty to Santa). Not fully sure where they got it from, normally in our house we don't express certainty about the Divine one way or the other.
I have the same problem with HDM as I do with CoN: if you remove the subtext the story isn't that great, and I find the propaganda tiresome. I will admit that, in both cases, the idea of the books was quite clever, but I did not enjoy reading them as an adult. I would probably feel differently were I six, and in the case of Con, did.
The Artemis Fowl Series. Different vibe, but YA and fun.
69: Oh, I don't have anything against the books myself, not being a Christian; I don't actually object to anti-Christian propaganda. It was just odd looking at them and thinking, "About these books, those people would have a point."
69 is a very New Testament direction to move in.
Has anyone here ever read The Big Joke Game by Scott Corbett? It was one of my favorite books as a kid, and a few years ago I bought a copy off of alibris or abe books to give as a gift, and it was even funnier and weirder than I remembered. Why isn't this still in print? You can get a copy from Amazon for like a hundred dollars now.
These aren't fantasy, but they fit the bill of a British series about scrappy children having adventures: Swallows and Amazons. All various sailing vacations, with adventury/camping stuff happening.
The The Princess Bride novel is pretty good.
75 is right. Bonus, you learn weird nautical jargon forever.
76: Yes, although the frame-story is too old for a kid that age; not scary, just dull. (I read that when I was just young enough not to be absolutely sure that the frame story was fiction, and I thought might be possible that the long version was out there. Then I wised up.)
That was really a good book. I didn't read it as a kid. I was in college and bored and found a copy in a library.
I liked the book enough that I didn't love the movie, which is kind of sad, because people seem fond enough of the movie that I probably would have liked better if I'd seen it first. (Mandy Patakin and Andre the Giant were perfect, but the rest of it not so much.)
Terry Pratchett's kids' books are a lot of fun (The Carpet People, the Truckers trilogy and the Johnny Maxwell trilogy) and a bright kid would probably enjoy the "YA" books being read aloud (the Tiffany Aching subseries), although perhaps not some of the later ones.
Apparently Andre the Giant and Cary Elwes became drinking buddies during the filming.
76. That book really was amazing. I loved it, but what I most vividly remember about the first time I read it (during the early 90s) was when during the frame story the narrator complains about his kid eating too much potatoes, because they will make him fat. This was at the height of the Susan Powter Stop the Insanity! infomercials, where you were told that you could eat 32 baked potatoes without gaining weight. Anyway, nutritional science. It goes in cycles.
Andre the Giant would drink so much during filming (like, several bottles of vodka) that he would pass out and the barkeep would have to leave him there until morning because no one could move him. He drank so much partly because he was in so much pain because of the acromegaly.
Bullet-pointed endorsements of upthread recommendations:
You totally can read Fear and Loathing aloud. I read it to the opinionated academic as a bedtime story. "Are you sitting comfortably? So let's begin. We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold..."
Redwall? Lots of books, don't know how good the later ones are.
The Dark is Rising started out good but it got really weird in the later ones- kind of followed the same quality trajectory as Golden Compass et seq.
Apparently I should just read the first books of series and quit.
The first Dark is Rising book is a prologue in which the POV characters are actual human children. In the rest the POVs are superhuman immortals who appear to their families to be human children, and that dissonance makes them really great.
I am unique in my cohort in that Cary Elwes imprinted on me early but NOT because of The Princess Bride which I still can't stand for some reason, but rather because of Lady Jane. I can't have first seen it when it came out as I was an actual toddler, but not that much later.
Speaking of Riordan, my kids have read/listened to 39 Clues. God damn I hate that shit. It's like a series for Henry Molaison, every other page they re-summarize the premise of the books.
Not fantasy, but good for young kids and enjoyable enough for parents who have to read aloud -- The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin, and the Egypt Game, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
Oh, for weird school books, what about The Mysterious Benedict Society? Sally liked the first a lot, I'm not sure about followups.
88: actually the last book was my favorite, and the first my least favorite. The way the seemingly gratuitous anti-immigrant-bullying episode at the beginning of Silver on on the Tree ties into the conclusion impressed me a lot, and the "Lost Land" chapter was one of the few things I've read to my daughter that seemed good enough to read to myself for fun. (The Magicians of Caprona was also near that level. And my reading habits have shifted completely from childhood, as though I became an entirely different person-- I don't read to get engrossed in stories in a make-believey way anymore and, most of the time, intensely dislike the feeling.)
Also Lloyd Alexander, T.H. White, that Wolves of Willoughby Chase lady.
This (plus about half of LB's recommendations) sums up my childhood.
I'd also recommend the Italo Calvino collection of Italian Folk Tales (no plot, and some genuine darkness and weirdness, but a good collection)
HDM is only slightly less creampuffy than Neil Gaiman, in the "I'm a big scary iconoclastic Brit! Watch me put paid to all your reverends and hierarchies! I may say 'wanker' where American children can hear it! Ooooo scary!" genre.
I don't think HDM does include the word "wanker" though it does have a scene where the heroine stabs God to death.
The Swallows and Amazons books are terrific. My parents tried to make my childhood as like that as they could, with some success.
I read HDM ~age 15 and thought it was great. No idea how it would hold up.
I honestly thought that Narnia was way better than Harry Potter, and I'm not Christian. I couldn't get beyond the second book of Harry Potter because I was spoiled by Pratchett's much more imaginative and interesting universe.
Another suggestion is the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. It's not quite fantasy perhaps, but it has lots of talking animals.
97 well look, she's too young for Vilette or Middlemarch. I stand by it being a very engaging series to read with a first-grader. The too-self-aware iconoclasm does not grate in that context.
UGH last sentence not italic.
We also reread the Little House on the Prarie books which are just so good and not fantasy at all but share something with it in the extended meditative descriptions imbuing mundane objects with magic, who needs the Sword of Gryffyndor or w ev when you can have an inflated pig bladder.
True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex is fantastic. It got made into a mediocre movie.
Just try to destroy a horcrux with an inflated pig bladder.
|?
I got 200 pages in the Judt, and had to drop it something I never do. Hardcore cold warrior in the age of Thatcher and Reagan, an unbearable book. Antidote I recommend is many many 60s and 70s East European movies. Watch some Miklos Jancso.
Currently hot political books in my circles are Jodi Dean's Crowds and Party and Joshua Clover's Riot Strike Riot Prime
But I think Richard Seymour this week wrote an absolutely brilliant article that is worth studying. Can Corbyn Build a Social Movement
i. The most basic social unit is not the individual, which is merely a politico-juridical effect of power relations, but the relation. Nothing social happens until there is a relationship (be it political, ideological or economic) between at least two types of agent. ii. These relations are organised within a particular mode of production, which assigns agents within them particular capacities and powers, depending on their dominance or subjugation. iii. The dominant relations in a given mode of production, insofar as it is characterised by exploitation, are antagonistic, thus leaving the social field cross-sected by struggles. iv. The mode of production is never fully 'realised'. It is always only realised to an extent within an open, complex and generative structure-in-difference, or social formation. It is the social formation in a given conjuncture, not the mode of production, that is the terrain of action of social forces. v. For relations to persist, they must be reproduced, and thus the manner of their reproduction, as well as the productive forces available to them to continue doing so, is decisive.These premises stress a processual perspective, and it in that perspective that we can start to locate the social movement. First of all, we can say that a condition for the emergence of a social movement is that the reproduction of a given social relationship has been put into question. Thus, a movement will be concerned with the conservation, disruption, reform, abolition or expanded reproduction of a set of social relations. That allows us to broadly comprehend the character of social movements (as reactionary, conservative, reformist, revolutionary, etc). A second condition for the emergence of a social movement is that social groups who are in an antagonistic relationship with one another come into direct (though overdetermined) conflict.
Of course I don't read fantasy, but watch some every night, along with millions and millions of others, all apparently alien and unrelatable to the Unfoggedetariat.
|>
Of course I don't read fantasy, but watch some every night, along with millions and millions of others, all apparently alien and unrelatable to the Unfoggedetariat.
Are you talking about the Olympics?
Huh. I spent the summer of 1999 reading Tony Judt (Past Imperfect) and watching Miklós Jancsó. I may or may not be laughing at the "Judt was a cold warrior" assessment. (I mean, he was! But nonetheless.)
I can't think of any better way to build a social movement than to remind people that to take a processual perspective on the mode of production.
99- I haven't read in a while, but I thought he just died in a chariot crash. Or did she put him out of his misery (he is portrayed as an old senile angel who needs to be in a nursing home).
This is the list I give to friends for their kids (or for their own reading enjoyment):
Tamora Pierce, Circle books (in order):
The Circle of Magic series
The Circle Opens series
The Circle Reforged series
Tamora Pierce, Tortall books (in order):
The Song of the Lioness Quartet
The Immortals Quartet
The Protector of the Small Quartet
The Trickster duet
The Beka Cooper trilogy
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Books of Earthsea (in order):
A Wizard of Earthsea
The Tombs of Atuan
The Farthest Shore
Tehanu
Tales from Earthsea
The Other Wind
Garth Nix, The Old Kingdom/Abhorsen series (in order):
Sabriel
Lirael
Abhorsen
Across the Wall (short stories)
Clariel
Kristin Cashore, Graceling Realm series (in order):
Graceling
Fire
Bitterblue
Cynthia Voigt, Tales of the Kingdom:
Jackaroo, aka The Tale of Gwyn
Elske, aka The Tale of Elske
Wings of a Falcon, aka The Tale of Oriel
On Fortune's Wheel, aka The Tale of Birle
Leigh Bardugo, The Grisha Trilogy (probably too scary for a six-year-old):
Shadow and Bone
Siege and Storm
Ruin and Rising
Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain (in order):
The Book of Three
The Black Cauldron
The Castle of Llyr
Taran Wanderer
The High King
Garth Nix -- Newt liked him, although I think a different series.
If you all catch enough pokemon maybe bob will stop disdaining you.
Oh also The Gammage Cup! That's good for kids on the younger side.
116 is too horrible to contemplate.
118: I don't think we have to worry about bob losing his disdain for us.
J. Robot: 2 Tamora Pierce series but not Trickster's Choice / Queen?
I just now went out for a cheese streusel muffin and hit level 12 (where you first get and improved pokeball).
OP: Ende's Neverending Story is pitched younger and very well written; it might be a year or two ahead, but if he's handling Harry Potter, it's unlikely to cause any trouble.
Tamora Pierce's books are good fluffy fantasy; Terrier is the start of a trilogy with appealing protagonists and not too much mayhem. First Test starts a four book series and is also good.
47: I liked Lavinia and appreciated it; but because I didn't suffer through the source material, it didn't make as strong an impression as it seems to have for you. The Telling is her recent book that I felt was striking. Four Ways to Forgiveness was excellent in a different way too.
122.3: I enjoyed Lavinia as well, but wondered if I would have liked it more or less if I had read The Aeneid. Have you read The Aeneid, Mossy?
So, cheese streusel muffins don't taste nearly as good as they sound.
124: Some things you have to learn the hard way.
122: I enjoyed the source material (in translation). I thought the greatness is in sheer perfection of writing, not necessarily connected to the material. That said, one of my other all-time favorites is Gardner's Grendel, so maybe I have a parallel-fiction thing.
I couldn't even finish it and it cost a whole dollar.
If you aren't talking about the muffin I'll have to disdain you myself.
I'm not spending a whole dollar on a copy o Grendel. That's been in the public domain for over 1,000 years.
Everyone is already familiar with the Dystopian YA Twitter feed, right?
You're thinking of Beowulf. A subtle distinction, but your arm-socket will feel the difference.
My older girl (11) is obsessed with Tamora Pierce. I read one of them--it was really pitched at 9 year olds (which she was at the time). Don't know about reading out loud, but inoffensive.
Rick Riordan is painful to read as an adult, but both girls love him. And they know a shit-ton about Greek and Roman mythology now, with newer series throwing in some Egyptian and Norse stuff on top of it. As long as I don't have to read it, I'm all for Riordan.
The Little House books are great, but do require a little pre-qualification around the inherent rightness of Manifest Destiny as presented in the book.
Did anyone else nearly lose his or her eyeballs on a sticky theater floor, because of all the rolling that occurred while viewing the animated Beowulf with Angelina Jolie's voice?
93: I enjoyed the Westing Game as an adult; my wife read it young and insisted that I read it too.
Or, it really looks like I could have just said read J Robot's suggestions in 114. Great lists!
45: For non-fiction, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A history of steam, industry, and invention was well written and engaging. The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II was also a good read.
I read Grendel when I was way, way, way too young. I still get the heebiejeebies if I see a copy of the paperback in a used bookstore.
Didn't see it in theater, but it was a lot of fun. Written by notorious wanker Neil Gaiman.
I saw "The Thirteenth Warrior" and thought it was pretty good.
They all fly up from Texas to help with your term paper? Sweet!
Ellen Raskin had a number of books I loved, but everything but The Westing Game seems to be out of print. Possibly the others weren't as good as I thought when I was nine, but does anyone remember The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) or The Tattooed Potato And Other Clues? Also Figgs and Phantoms?
He might like Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series, at least the first one.
When I read a Wrinkle in Time as a kid a friend and I wasted a whole afternoon trying to bounce balls in perfect synchronization like the children on the dark planet (Camazotz?) May have missed the point.
139: I love that movie devotedly. That movie is sexist and patriarchal or something. Check your privilege.
I agreed with 139, but only on first viewing.
A friend sent me a PDF of Figgs & Phantoms to read as an adult (it's apparently that good), and I loved The Westing Game but may not have gotten to the others. Too bad.
142.2 is the most wonderful thing. Also, I realize I have the children's theater production of A Wrinkle in Time mixed up with a Bill Viola installation I saw a few key developmental years later. So maybe I did read those other Raskin books but have them mentally filed under "minor works of Guy Debord" or something.
Nonfiction: I liked Simon Winchester's book about Krakatoa or Richard White's Railroaded, which includes a bit about unions and strikes.
Because books, this mentions Franzen and Wallace incidentally, and Franzen appears not to be a dick.
Ok, mentions of Zilpha Keatley Snyder: I have an intense memory of a book that I can't place, and I think it's ZKS. A lot of it takes place in a museum, and there is poetry in it, about a sarcophagus in the mezzanine. (It's not Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, despite the sarcophagus.) I remember it being a pretty dark book, but I cannot retrieve more details.
Oh wow, that was easy. "Eyes in the Fishbowl". It was a department store, not a museum. Why have I not been able to figure that one out?
I love Eyes in the Fishbowl. Also, The Changeling. So much emotional intensity packed in a book otherwise suitable for a nine-year-old!
Oh, I thought of the perfect book for Ogged's kids. Through the Hidden Door, by Rosemary Wells. Unless you think the stories of school bullying will put them on their guard for when you want to send them away to boarding school.
120: Look again, I included the Trickster books.
120: Look again, I included the Trickster books.
Ah yes, I see them.
Sorry, didn't mean to sound snippy. I am very sensitive about my love for Tamora Pierce.*
*True story: I cried when I met her two years ago. She was giving a talk about Lloyd Alexanser at the Philly Free Library, and I went with one of my former students whom I had introduced to Pierce's books. I didn't come across the books until I was a grad student, but they've gotten me through many dispiriting moments.
100 is wonderfully true, child still reread them last year at 14, although he may have finally left them behind.
J, Robot, 155 is lovely. Susan read the Lioness books to Rilee and Noser and they enjoyed them a lot. I read them also, and they are great.
Noser and Rilee enjoyed the How to Train Your Dragon books. I hope to get them to read the Taran books, The Dark is Rising books, and the Belgariad in the not-too-distant future.
Mooaeking, I love The Telling! I'm so glad someone else does.
Time travel novels that I read with my son when he was maybe 7 or 8 years old:
Tom's Midnight Garden. Classic; needs no introduction; etc. etc.
Playing Beatie Bow. Spooky! and all shivery-delightful.
Also, we read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. But when I broke down sobbing, my boy was quite concerned, and figured we had had enough: "We don't have to finish this one, Mum."
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and sequels (Mr Tyco Bass). Sweet fantasy, though not if the sense of what fantasy fiction sense has come to mean. Dated. I read these when I was very little, maybe 2nd-3rd grade, so that means late 1950s. My kids loved them as well and there are few things better than your kids loving books that you also loved. The youngest two have now powered through all my Ambler, Chandler, Hammet et al.
I also second Clytemnestra's rec of Laura Ingalls Wilder. My wife read all of these to our elder kids and I think it's one of the reasons they became such good readers. Though their taste in movies is still awful, based on the Netflix recs they generate and what winds up getting charged to my Amazon account.
Also: having been raised Irish Catholic in Soviet Canuckistan, on the edge of a damn grove of balsam trees, I have to say that the All-of-a-Kind-Family series really rocked my world.
How I longed to be Jewish, and live in a pre-War apartment buildiing in New York City. Henny was always my favourite: but Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, Gertie: I loved, and still love, them all.
Ah I remembered a few more: the first full chapter book with no pictures we ever read my daughter was The Last Unicorn, which also belongs on the list of things that are palatable for literate grown-ups. (Not sure it would be as big a hit for boys, who are not primed to identify with unicorns, but it's terrific.) And Thurber's Thirteen Clocks. We may reread both of those soon. She loved Patricia Wrede's Dealing with Dragons series almost as much as Harry Potter and Amulet, so much that we read several of them to her twice. And we borrowed some Moomin family comics from a friend and bought more at Books of Wonder.
161: And that's right, I had forgotten Kate DiCamillo. With all respect for different sensibilities, Edward Tulane seemed like a grossly manipulative tearjerker to me without much else going on, and lourdes and I richly despised The Tale of Despereaux. The kid was fine with both.
My son hates the Despereaux one. I've never read it.
141--I am an Ellen Raskin completist! I loved all of her novels but especially The Tatooed Potato!
I recommend The Greenglass House by Kate Milford, which is a very engaging and solid mystery appropriate for young children. There are ghosts and smugglers and snowy Christmas events--it's full of lovely detail. Mysterious Benedict Society is also good.
R.L. Lafevers writes two good series--Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist and the Theodosia series (think young Indiana Jones but a girl).
The Wind in the Willows is super British, has great animals, and the potential for many excellent voices when reading.
You might also think about Mary Poppins--magic, British, a teacher-like figure, except those novels get pretty strange. But they mostly have story-like sections and are easy to read. Likewise, Peter Pan could be a big hit, especially with a young boy.
In terms of fantasy for young ones, Bedknobs and Broomstick is solid British fantasy by Mary Norton and he might also enjoy The Borrowers (also by her--and then you can watch the delightful movie Arriety).
Margery Sharpe's Miss Bianca novels are a true delight.
You might also try The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle
I also recommend the Diana Wynne Jones, Alexander Lloyd, Edward Eager, and Garth Nix ideas mentioned by others. Happy reading!
163--Yes, growing up in Omaha, I loved All of a Kind Family and just wanted to get a cracker or a pickle out of a barrel like they do in the books!
My mom grew up in Omaha and she used to get olives out of barrels.
Wait, we have two Nebraskans? That seems like it must be over the quota.
But, in general, getting crackers from barrels isn't something that makes me thing of New York or Jewishness.
On the other hand, I guess we do have (at least) two New Mexicans, so maybe we've still got the proportions right.
Now I want to go to Marino's, but I'm 95% certain that it closed.
(Gabardine Bathyscaphe would be a third, but she doesn't seem to comment anymore. Maybe there are others I haven't thought of.)
Anyway, I haven't been to Omaha for 11 days.
You can take the Nebraskan out of Nebraska, but not for long, apparently.
There has never been a single Nebraska meet-up of which I have been aware.
Maybe you just need to promote them better.
I can never fly out of Omaha on a morning flight because my son will insist on a breakfast pizza (Godfather's) and the last time I had one, I got back to Pittsburgh and puked it up.
"Godfather's Pizza: Moby's never puked-up our lunch/dinner offerings and Herman Cain hasn't managed us for years."
169--We've already established that Moby and I are from NE, also Natilo Paennim.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_14434.html
178--Alas, no NE meetups for me because I don't live there anymore and hardly visit as my parents left.
180--That breakfast pizza sounds awful, but I would give anything for a slice of Godfather's hamburger pizza
Still a better reputation than Trump's.
182: Natilo's not from Nebraska, though, is he? I thought he just lived there for a while. But I had forgotten that you were.
Tom's Midnight Garden yes! And the Old Knowe books, though pitched a bit younger than Potter.
know he went to Natilo went to college there. "Hamburger pizza" seems really like a Nebraska thing. I had it a couple of weeks ago, but it was Valentino's (my parents are in Lincoln).
I've seen hamburger pizza lots of places. It could well have originated in Nebraska AFAIK, though.
That's not my best writing. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Natilo went to college in Omaha.
I mean, Natilo is kind of Minnesota to the core, right? It's right there in his pseud, as well as in his uber-Scandinavian real name.
He definitely did go to college in Omaha, though. Maybe he'll stop by to comment, although I'm not sure how often he checks in here these days.
!!!!!!! I ordered a guitar from a guy in Nebraska a few years ago, and he was seriously short on packing peanuts so the case came "padded" with a greasy old pizza box with the order taped to the box lid: half sausage, half hamburger. I died laughing. Really, this is a local thing?
Hamburger pizza, indecisiveness, or shitty packaging?
The sausage is basically hamburger with maybe a molecule of garlic.
191 Why didn't I think of that? I could have used a genuine NYC pizza box too.
This Canuck loved the All of a Kind Family books too, and so did my son. Moving to Montreal as a student was the closest I got to being in those books. We're on The Long Winter from the Little House series now (out-loud reading). I'm actually liking how the books make a stealthy starting place to talk about about land. He liked both Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on their Toes, (big family, unconventional family, history) but a couple of chapters had to be skipped. I remember loving the Green Knowe books, but haven't read them as an adult.
There's a decent Green Knowe movie (From Time to Time, I think) where the grandmother is working on Lucy Boston's actual quilts. Plus racism and time travel and Jimmy McNulty. But I was mostly into it for the quilts.
If JRoth or oudemia are around - what books offer good kid versions of Greek and Roman myths?
Yes on The Mushroom Planet books. Also yes on any kids' Thurber (Thirteen Clocks, The White Deer, Many Moons).
197: Just set them loose on Wikipedia.
If you want him to be a misanthrope with a twisted sense of humor, I highly recommend Roald Dahl. My father read me the Witches at about that age and it scared the crap out of me, but the BFG and James and the Giant Peach are less scary. We also really loved the Twits, which is probably a sign of being a horrible person.
If you want him to be a maudlin and overly sentimental Lutheran, I recommend Hans Christian Andersen. His more obscure tales are very heavy on the religious morality tale angle, like the Girl who Trod on a Loaf, or the Girl with the Red Shoes. But if "and then she got to go to heaven" is your idea of a happy ending, I recommend his stories. (As a kid I liked all of his stuff, but the Snow Queen, the Tinder Box were two of my favorites.)
I also want to Nth all the other recommendations. I loved Lloyd Alexander, and his Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen is possibly my favorite of his. I also loved E Nesbit and Edward Eager, and whatever racism was in Nesbit went over my head (The Book of Dragons by her might be least likely to have overt racism because IIRC there aren't any brown people). I also liked Wrinkle in Time at that age and fought it appropriately scary. Same with the Hobbit, which my father read aloud to us, although I remember finding it long and complicated. As a kid my favorite was probably the Chronicles of Narnia, and the religious stuff completely went over my head, even with my parents actively pointing it out. I think had I been older when I first read them I would have found them a bit preachy, but at five I just got totally immersed in the worldbuilding. At a slightly older age I also loved the Susan Cooper books. At five I might have found them too scary and complex.
I also liked the Secret Garden and A Little Princess, but they might not be as engaging for a boy. I read Mary Poppins (not sure if it was the racist version or not), and all the Wizard of Oz books, which get increasingly bizarre. Whatever weird politics they have I didn't pick up on, though they do have a transgender character as one of the protagonists, which normalized gender transition to me as a kid (haven't read it as an adult so can't say how it holds up.)
Pippi Longstocking is great for kids that age, and Astrid Lindgren also has more high fantasy. Mio my Mio and Brothers Lionheart were two of my favorite, though they're both reasonably dark. The Children of Noisy Village is good and very light and humorous for a small child. The Emil series is also perfect for a 5 year old boy, it's about a boy that age who gets into a series of humorous pranks.
I also loved folk and fairy tales. My parents had a 1000 page book of Scandinavian folk and fairy tales, which range from more standard tales to very dark to very bizarre ones. They also read the original Grimm's tales, and then they had collections of folk and fairy tales from around the world, which I enjoyed.
I also liked Heidi (the original book, not the abridged children's versions), and as a small child the issue of homesickness and being forcibly removed from your caregiver is pretty moving/distressing, so I remember it having a lot of emotional impact.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Stuart Little, Trumpeter of the Swan are all other books I can think of off the top of my head.
My grandmother read David Copperfield to me as a kid, and I remember enjoying that but 5 is probably too young.
I highly DON'T recommend Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. My grandmother read it to me, and it's hideously long and boring and I though Hans Brinker was a tool and I disliked the book so much it left me with a general vague dislike for Dutch people.
I think someone already said Wind and the Willows, and I also remember liking it and finding it the right level of scary at about that age.
My favorite book in first grade was The Phantom Tollbooth, which LB recommended.
Lb's mention of the White Deer reminded me of The White Stag, which is a children's retelling of the life of Attila the Hun and the founding of Hungary that somehow appeared on our shelves. If you want your children to be little budding Hungarian nationalists, I would recommend. (Though, given the current state of Hungarian nationalism, you probably want to steer clear).
They're not fantasy, but The Saturdays and the Four Story Mistake are also good. In retrospect, there's a possibly somewhat problematic story about someone getting kidnapped by gypsies, but it's a teaching moment for antiziganism.
What did Attila the Hun have to do with the founding of Hungary? He died in 453; the Magyars didn't arrive in Pannonia until the 9th century.
A signal lesson in the failings of YA history novels.
I went through Heinlein juveniles at a tremendous rate; good for the 10-13 year old or maybe a bit younger.
Just be sure they stick to the juveniles.
204
Well, IIRC it was more about the birth of the Magyar as a people than the actual modern nation-state. Also, I was 8 when I read it, so things probably got mixed up.