Books for Sensitive Young Readers and Read Alouds

My kids have always been more sensitive than their peers, and I don't know that I mean that in a good way.  There are some Disney movies we have yet to make it through because Disney offs the mom in so many.  That's too much for my kids.  In books they could take a little more, but still, it was sometimes hard finding books that engaged them but didn't leave them whimpering or refusing to finish.  Lego Kid read only non-fiction for years.  It was a real challenge to find fiction that both engaged him and that he could tolerate.

This came up on one of my lists today.  I'm glad to know it's not just my kids.  Here's a list of books of good books for young sensitive kids.

Personally vouch for these:

Winnie the Pooh,, by A.A. Milne - ok, anything by A.A. Milne
Milly Molly Mandy, by Joyce Lankester Brisley
The Teddy Robinson Story Book, by Joan Robinson
Twig, by Elizabeth Orton Jones
Puck of Pook's Hill, by Rudyard Kipling
Reward and Fairies, by Rudyard Kipling
Kenny and the Dragon, by Toni DiTerlizzi
The Dragon of Lonely Island, by Rebecca Rupp
My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahm
Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel (pretty much anything by Arnold Lobel)
Little Bear books, by Elsa Holmund Minarik
Henry and Mudge books, by Cynthia Rylant
Freddy stories by Walter R. Brooks
The Zoom Trilogy, by Tim Wynne-Jones, illustrated by Eric Beddows
Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery
Five Children and It, by Edith Nesbit
The Mouse and the Motorcycle, by Beverly Cleary (actually the whole Ralph S. Mouse series is good)
The Rover Adventures, by Roddy Doyle -warning, these are pee-your-pants-funny and have low brow humor that my 5 yo boys loved.  I loved them too.

Recommended from the list, that I may check out later:

Moomin books
The Adventures of Nils
Homer Price
Centerburg Tales
Hank the Cowdog series
Uncle Wiggly stories
Faraway Tree series
Willow Farm books
Children at Green Meadows
7 Day Magic, by Edgar Eager
The Enormous Egg, by Butterworth
Homer Price, by Robert McClowsky
Time Warp Trio series, by John Scieszka
The Borrowers
 books  by Dick King Smith
books  by Thornton Burgess
books by Enid Blighton
books by Robert McCloskey
stories by Joan Aiken  (The Necklace of Raindropos)

And in case I missed something here is Pauline's List.

Homeschooling Shakespeare

We are lucky enough to live near a college town.. The school started as an agricultural school, but has grown into a full fledged university, complete with a theatre department that does an annual outdoor production of Shakespeare. This year the production is a comedy, "Twelfth Night". Yea for us!

I used this as an excuse to start Shakespeare with the kids. Yes, they're just 13, 10 & 6. Yes, some of it is over their heads. (Less than you'd think!) The hardest part is that the tragedies are, well, tragic. My young kids have challenges around anything to do with suspense, people getting into trouble, or getting hurt. That kinda puts a dent in how we can approach Hamlet and Macbeth, ya know? That's why I was so glad to find a comedy being produced this year.

So, for those who have asked "How do you do it?" regarding homeschooling in general, this is an example of how I throw something at the kids.

First of all it helped that I had a goal. By the end of June I wanted the kids and I to be comfortable with Shakespeare's language, the plot and characters of Twelfth Night, and have some understanding of the historical context of Shakespearean times. Why the end of June? That's when we get to go see the live performance!

First I did a little poking around. I found Twelfth Night, by Leon Garfield, illustrated by Ksenia Prytkova at the library. It was a fantastic introduction to the play - a much abbreviated cartoon book that gave us the gist of the plot and characters with lots of visuals to grab the kids attention.

I also found the much touted Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb on audio at NetLibrary. Now this was a lucky find for us, but not in the way I expected. I found the stories to be watered down and almost boring. It left out the witches' "Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble " verses in Macbeth. That's a terrible oversight. It's worth the whole bloody play just for that scene. In addition, the language was archaic (having been written at the turn of the 19th century) yet had little to no Shakespearean phrasing or flow. For my (over) sensitive kids though, this was perfect! The tragedies were so watered down that nearly all the emotion was taken out and the kids could get through the stories. By the end of the book the boys were predicting whether it was a tragedy or a comedy within the first few scenes of each story. "It's a tragedy. There's a character with ambition." or "This must be a comedy Mom! It's got twins and women cross dressing."

Next we listened to a Recorded Books "Shakespeare Appreciated Production of Twelfth Night" downloaded from Netlibrary. This was fantastic. It had a woman narrating, with actors playing each role. The narrator set the scene as if we were watching the play in Shakespearean times and interrupts the play to explain word uses and historical context. Now, if you want a watered down version, this isn't for you. Shakespeare was rather bawdy. If you object to an explanation of how "my golden rod" really means penis, or how one character was really calling another character "urine face", or how a male sea captain falls in love with a rescued boy, then you should probably skip this. I have 3 UU boys though, and they thought all this quite hilarious. In addition, since the actors were really saying the lines as written, the kids got a taste of Shakespeare's true genius. As my 10 yo said, "He uses a lot of the same stories, but he says it different every time"

Now I could stop there. We are ready to see the play and enjoy it without getting too lost. But I still have some resources I haven't gotten around to yet. There's the audio of Edith Nesbit's "Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare" we got off of Librivox. There's "Shakespeare's Greatest Hit's" by Bruce Coville from the library. There's "Shakespeare Stories" by Leon Garfield, illustrated by Micheal Foreman. There are all the books about Shakespeare himself, about the Globe Theatre, about the Elizabethan era .... Well, you get the idea. We might take a break, but we will never be done with Shakespeare!

How to find books

It used to be easy to find a good book. We'd just wonder the stacks at our local library until something caught our eye. That's changing. Our library seems to be moving away from the printed page. It's all about meeting space, video games, and computers now. The children's stacks are being reduced to almost 50% of what they where. The emphasis in the stacks seems be on newer books, best sellers, and media tie-ins. We could find all that at the local chain book store. The library is not about bibliophiles anymore.

So where do we go to find good books? How to we find those favorites and classics that we don't know about yet? Well, librarians are still a good source. So far our local library hasn't done away with them completely. (Bitter? Me? Ha!)

There are the meta-books, books about books, like Jim Trelease's "Read Aloud Handbook", and Esme Raji Codell's "How to Get Your Child to Love Reading". There are books with great reading lists like Susan Wise Bauer's "The Well Trained Mind" and Oliver DeMille's "A Thomas Jefferson Education". There are also websites that can help you search out books similar to those you already like. I know about the Literature Map and Scholastic's Book Wizard. After that I just pick the brains of my favorite people.

I look in many places and then try to put the books on hold, either at the local library (which is becoming harder, what with the stacks being reduced and all) or through Prospector or through Inter-Library-Loan (ILL). If I can't get what I want that way, I have to consider buying it. If I want it bad enough I will. That's what I did to get Isaac Asimov's arithmetic books "Asimov on Numbers", "Quick and Easy Math", and "Realm of Algebra". I've used Alibris for out of print titles.

How about you? How do you find your next favorite book? Where do you go to get it?

Books for Reluctant and/or Emerging Readers

So far 2/3 of my kids are reading. Both the older two have gone through a stage where they weren't (aren't) interested in reading independently, even though they were (are) capable of it. (This seems to be around age 8/9, but probably varies from kid to kid.)

I've taken a multi-pronged approach to help with this:

I keep reading to them, as long as they'll let me.

I encourage them to listen to books on tape (usually at or above their reading level, but age appropriate and at their interest level).

I have asked them to help me with the younger sibling(s) by helping the next youngest learn their letters, phonetics, and basic spelling. (What will I do with the youngest?!?)

I strew high interest books at or below their reading ability, some of which I actually (gasp!) purchase.

So, for those with kids (I only have boys) who might need a little enticing, here are some books that have gone over well at our house. There is cross over between the boys of course, but here is a general break down.

Eyewitness books by DK publishing in areas of interest
I'll Read to You, You Read to Me series by Mary Ann Hoberman
Geronimo Stilton series by, well, by Geronimo Stilton

With my oldest, into adventure, fantasy, science, and technology:
Bionicle series by Greg Farshtey
Droon series by Tony Abbot
Danny Dunn series by Jay Williams


With my middlest, into humor, animals, biology, and poetry:

Where The Sidewalk Ends, and other books by Shel Silverstein
Alvin Ho series by Leanor Look
Roscoe Riley Rules series by Katherine Applegate
Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey (anything by this guy is silly and fun!)

There are many others, it's finding them that can be challenging.
When I want to find more books that might work for us I ask friends, librarians, book store clerks, and check out some websites. Here's a couple that I've used.
Literature Map - type in the name of an author you like and names of similar authors will be displayed.
Scholastic Book Wizard - use book-a-like to find similar books at appropriate reading levels.

I'd love to hear what others have liked. What are your favorites?