books to read to a 5 year old

[meemee]

UGH!!!! senior moment here. i meant reading to a 10 year old - a 5th grader. 

i need a classic to read to dd. a classic that will make her think? she wants me to read her a good book. it has to be a kind of book i enjoy too otherwise i'll fall asleep.

she has right now got her nose buried in to kill a mocking bird. 

what i am looking for is meat in the book. that it has some substance. doesnt have to be advanced. we just finished reading some fairy stories from russia which were written for younger children. i'd love to read her some oliver twist or something to that extent because she wouldnt read it herself. 

what i need is an inspiring story for both of us. dd reads a lot of fantasy (i cant stand that genre- sorry i can do fairy tales adn folk tales, but not HP or LOTR). 

[queenjane]

I opened the post to suggest To Kill A Mockingbird only to see that she is already reading it. Oops!

I'll have to think some more. Sorry.

[ollyoxenfree]

Well, if not Oliver Twist, how about A Christmas Carol? It's a terrific "starter" Dickens for middle schoolers.

It's the right time of year for it. It's filled with wonderful Dickens characters and a beloved, well-known plot. It's a bit of a challenge from a language perspective but because the story is so familiar and has been adapted so many times, most middle schoolers aren't intimidated by it. It raises all sorts of social issues and historical topics. 

[weliveintheforest]

Little Women, Obasan, The Giver, The Witch of Blackbird Pond

[journeymom]

The Phantom Toll Booth, Hatchet, The Secret Garden, Island of the Blue Dolphins, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

My dd adored the Sisters Grimm series.  It might be too much Fantasy for you, or maybe it's different enough.  It helps that the main characters are girls. Same with A Wrinkle in Time.  It's fantasy, but there's nary a magic wand or sword in sight.

And Anne of Green Gables.

[journeymom]

Diary of Anne Frank, Night by Elie Wiesel.

[meemee]

thanks mamas.

so i have another question (warning: i overthink a lot).

a dilema.

which books to read to her and which i want her to read and discover on her own.

for instance i remember little women so clearly. its a book that almost everyone enjoys. same with anne of green gables. should i not let dd read those books on her own?

she has enjoyed reading the land of the blue dolphin and the secret garden.

perhaps okasan and the giver might be a better book to read to her? might pick up a wrinkle in time because that's a book i myself have not read.

and olly christmas carol is a great starter. except she has seen the movie. but i'll see if she will let us plod through the language.

i will have to figure this on my own - because i dont want to read those books she would enjoy reading on her own.

[ollyoxenfree]

Originally Posted by meemee 

i will have to figure this on my own - because i dont want to read those books she would enjoy reading on her own.

I guess I'd say that you don't have to figure it out on your own. You can sort it out together with your DD. Suggest a few titles to your DD that you think you would both enjoy reading together. Ask her for her own suggestions. There are so many books out there that she won't run out of great books to explore on her own. Also, if there is something she'd like to read on her own after you've read it together, she can do that too. 

[queenjane]

I thought of some good ones i read to my son when he was about that age:

Where the Red Fern Grows

Sounder

Old Yeller

Johnny Tremain

Ender's Game

Fahrenheit 451

Lord of the Flies

War of the Worlds

I havent read these but they look good:

Summer of my German Soldier

Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

The Giver

The Chocolate War

You havent read A Wrinkle in Time??? Oh you must! its so wonderful...as well as the two that follow (A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet)....now i want to read them again! I read them in 4th grade....i remember loving them so much.

Has she read the His Dark Materials books(The Golden Compass etc)? It took me awhile to get into them...i tried to read the first to my son and was so confused about what was happening we stopped. I picked them up again a couple of years later and we really got into them. I felt like they really had impact, said a lot about life, love, the meaning of friendship etc.

[KimbleJ]

It might seem a bit young, but Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH--awesome book!

Boy by Roald Dahl is great, and the sequel, Going Solo, is even better!

Does she like adventure stories?  The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle, anything by Jules Verne, especially Around the World in Eighty Days, The Chronicles of Narnia (that one might be a little too much of a fantasy, though).

Flowers for Algernon

Other ones that come to mind: The Jungle Book, Tom Sawyer, The Westing Game, The Boggart, Animal Farm (not sure how you feel about the themes about Bolshevik Revolution), all the Mary Poppins books (lots of interesting adventures and some beautifully written bits), and--if she hasn't already read it--A Little Princess.

Seconding (and thirding) Phantom Tollbooth and The Giver--great for reading aloud.

And, last but not least, The Little Prince. (I get something new out of it every time I read it).

[pek64]

Many Waters is part of the Wrinkle in Time family.

In addition to getting suggestions here, ask at your library and bookstore. We used to take a stack of books and read the first couple pages to give us an idea if the book was a "taker".

We also enjoyed Gordon Korman books, early Bionicle books, Deltora Quest series of books, A Wizard at Work and Diane Duane wizard books. Not sure which were read at which age. Bedknobs and Broomsticks is another wizardy book. We enjoyed that kind of thing for quite a while. It really depends on what you find interesting.

[KimbleJ]

Okay, so I just thought of Pollyanna, Cricket in Times Square, Alice in Wonderland, The Outsiders, Prince and the Pauper

A bit darker: Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, Peter Pan

Short stories are also really nice to read aloud. Ray Bradbury and E.B. White have some amazing ones. Oh, and "The Most Dangerous Game."

[meemee]

oooh nice list going. for some reason she doesnot like classics. i borrowed old yeller and she wouldnt pick it up. she is VERY PICKY with what SHE reads. it almost looks to me like if the book was a 10 year old print she wont open it. we check out at least 20 books and maybe two or three will appeal to her.

she has read all of Roald Dahl and the NIMH series too i think and quite a bit of Kipling (she was curious as that was her grandfathers favourite author).

kimble she loves adventure so she has read the Narnia series. no i wouldnt read that to her. we have done some modern grown up short stories. i love love love ray bradbury's language but just cant get into his books. not my thing.

this last week we were actually reading a bunch of ethnic and seasonal cookbooks. we had to stop because even after a full stomach it got us really hungry. plus i really dont have the means to buy all the ingredients and make those meals... so stopped reading them.

since she has read diary of anne frank i think she will enjoy Summer of my German Soldier.

olly GREAT idea about having her go through what we want to read together.

pek64 thankfully dd and the children's librarian have similar tastes. both of them hated the warrior cats series which was so so popular.

this is a very interesting place for me to be in. i realise i have this mental block of what dd 'should' read since she is a 'child'. i gotta get out of that notion.

hey maybe since she is reading mocking bird, perhaps uncle toms cabin might be a good book to read to her now. esp. she brought up the N word and didnt like how they were using that. brought up banned books and the history of language.

[ollyoxenfree]

Originally Posted by meemee 

hey maybe since she is reading mocking bird, perhaps uncle toms cabin might be a good book to read to her now. esp. she brought up the N word and didnt like how they were using that. brought up banned books and the history of language.

Perhaps Huckleberry Finn instead of Uncle Tom's Cabin? I haven't read Uncle Tom's Cabin, although I've had a copy for years. The size of the book is daunting, to say the least. 

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is a fascinating read about a young slave and is set during the American Revolution. It's a fairly recent publication but written in archaic language. There are two books about Octavian and his adventures before, during and after the war. 

[Daffodil]

My first thought was The Hobbit, until I got to the last sentence of the OP.  Then I was thinking The Martian Chronicles, until I read that you don't like Ray Bradbury.  So maybe I'm the wrong person to be making any suggestions here.  But what about Alice in Wonderland?  Has she read that?  Or what about Swallows and Amazons?  That's a classic in the sense that it's been around for a while, if not in the sense that it's great literature, and my kids loved it.  His Dark Materials is a great suggestion, but I have the feeling it might not be the kind of thing you like (and might be the kind of thing your DD would read on her own.)

[meemee]

oooh you guys ROCK!!!!

olly i just checked out the annotated text of uncle toms cabin and after the first few chapters (i read it myself and not to dd) thought nuh uh. this archaic language is not going to fly for dd. too many stops and explanations. yeah i had forgotten what a tome it was. but your suggestion sounds fantastic. i hadnt heard of it. i just hope its not too archaic. i think we are on the theme of race and and that will be a good choice. she has read twain a while back. 

one of the things i am discovering too is that if she has seen the movie she is reluctant to read the book which is why she refuses to pick up alice in wonderland or the golden compass. daffodil swallows and amazon sounds very interesting. how interesting it has the same history as alice in wonderland - that is inspired by real children. 

[Daffodil]

Originally Posted by meemee 

one of the things i am discovering too is that if she has seen the movie she is reluctant to read the book which is why she refuses to pick up alice in wonderland or the golden compass.

Does she realize that the movie is usually very different from the book and that the book is usually a million times better?  If she refuses to pick up Alice in Wonderland, that sounds to me like an excellent choice for a read-aloud.  That's a book everyone ought to read, and you'll probably enjoy it as much as she does.

[journeymom]

Oh golly. About Golden Compass, I hope she gives it a try sometime, on her own.  The book is far superior to the movie.  I'm glad I'd read the whole thing before the movie came out.

By the way, 17 y.o. dd said she re-read it recently for the first time since she was 12 y.o., and said she got soooo much more out of it. Go figure!

[meemee]

daffodil - she does get that the books are different from movies. she got that from the HP and LOTR series as well as from The Help.

see at this point i am not sure why she is reading? for the beauty of language or content, the storyline. or a bit of both. 

i think one of the things is that there are so many books she wants to read that she doesnt want to visit those books about which she already has an idea. 

journeymom i'll keep that in mind. 

[KimbleJ]

Hmm...maybe you could pickup one of those anthologies--"Greatest Short Stories of the 20th Century," "...Great British Writers," "Greatest Stories from the New Yorker," etc. Then you'd have access to several different writing styles at once.