Right now we are just reading short, picture books. Suess and Little Golden Books. Stuff like that.
I was wondering from other parents who have been there: when can I start reading him books that we read a chapter one night and pick up the next night and read the next chapter?
I don’t want to waste The Wind In the Willows if he won’t be able to appreciate it.
He’ll be three in June. He’s a pretty smart kid. He’s not performing complex equations, but he’s not eating his own shit!
He has a solid vocabulary and likes to have books read to him. Any advice? Any other age appropriate books I can read him? I can’t wait until I can read him The Mouse and Motorcycle, but I think that is a few years ahead of him!
We started when my daughter was two. She’s very verbal and has always been ahead of the reading curve, but I’d say go for it. I think our first was Charlotte’s Web. We also did The Wizard of Oz and even The Hobbit pretty early.
I think Charlie was 4 when we started chapter books. We started with the original Peter Pan by James M. Barrie. Then we did The Wizard of Oz, also the original story by L. Frank Baum. He’s six now and we’ve done so many books, including Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Peter and the Starcatchers, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to name a few.
Somewhere around 3 1/2 for ours. Charlotte’s Web. Some horrible thing called ‘The Princess School’. Along with others. But she looks forward to her nightly chapters.
When my mom was about four or so, her mother read her The Old Man and the Sea as a bedtime story.
On the one hand, my mom grew up to be one of the smartest, most literate people I know. On the other hand, she never really liked her mom all that much. I blame Hemingway for both.
Why not just start tonight? If your kid gets bored or can’t follow along, you can just stop and go back to picture books. I tend to think that we under-estimate the capabilities of children. A hundred years ago, a kid as old as yours would probably have already started learning classical Greek.
I think DangerGirl had just turned 3. We started with My father’s dragon and the rest of the trilogy, which are simpler than things like Peter Pan. We also had great success with Lois Lowry’s Sam books and Kenneth Grahame’s The reluctant dragon. Winnie the Pooh wasn’t really a big hit, but then I’m not a Pooh fan.
DG is now 4.5, and we’re currently reading Little house in the big woods. We just finished The wizard of Oz.
I would read him The mouse and the motorcycle before The wind in the willows–we’ve had a lot of fun with Ralph Mouse, but I’m planning to save TWITW till she’s five.
Other chapter books we had success with for a 3-year-old:
Jenny and the Cat Club – Esther Averill
the Magic Tree House chapter books (time travel adventures) – Mary Pope Osborne
The Littles – I forget the author
Edward Eager books like Half Magic
the Moomintroll books – Tove Jansson (Finland’s contribution to world children’s literature, and better than Pippi IMO)
Grimm’s Fairy Tales – the edition by Wanda Gag (of Millions of Cats fame). The stories are true to the original text, but a little streamlined for preschooler comprehension.
Well, the first chapter book I can remember reading on my own was “The Boxcar Children” in 1st grade, when I was 6. I can imagine that if you’re reading to her, you can start a year or two (or three) before that.
Whether or not you can start reading chapter books to the under-5 set has a lot to do with the quality and quantity of books you already have in your home and whether TV plays a big part in your lives. If there’s much more reading going on in your home than TV viewing, you can pretty much read The Wall Street Journal and the kid will want to read–provided of course, there are books around of interest at their own reading level, that they will want to hear over and over again. Most early reading is re-reading.
I’ll second the “Whenever he will sit still for it.” Our first didn’t like non picture books until she was just over 4. The one who is now 4 sat still for them when she was three if her big sister was also there.
For kids in the 3-5 range, the Raggedy Ann and Andy books are tremendous. Wizard of Oz books as already mentioned, and the Little house on the Prairie books. Since you have a boy, this may be the only chance he will have to experience these classics before he grows up and finds out that they are not cool.
Wow. I’ve only just started reading my daughter chapter books, and she’s six. I never would have read chapter books, or books with no pictures at all, to her when she was three. I’m not saying it’s bad that you all did do that, I’m just surprised to find so many of you doing it!
My daughter’s fairly bright; her reading age is 11+ (like certain amps, the tests at the schools here only go up to 11). However, there are so many great picture books that I felt no need to rush her. For the same reason, I’m not reading her books like Harry Potter - I want her to have the satisfaction of discovering those for herself.
At three she often wanted the same story repeated (most kids do and it is actually a good ‘pre-reading’ skill), liked pictures that helped her guess what a few of the words were, and liked books that would give her the whole story while she still had it in her head. She would have remembered a story if it were continued over several nights and she would have appreciated it - but she just woulodn’t have appreciated it as much as picture books. Now she’ll happily anticipate a story for the next night, or I’ll read her some and she’ll read some more then tell me what happened.
Disclaimer: ever kid is different. This is just what worked with mine.
Your screenname makes me wonder if you know that these exist. Perfect bedtime reading, right?
I don’t think my parents ever read me chapter books - they stopped reading to me when I learned how myself at age four - so I was probably around six before I got into any books without pictures.
I read my eldest chapter books starting when she was about 3. She read to herself from age 4 onward, but I’ve never stopped reading to her, and she’s 9 now. She loves our reading times together still. We just finished Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett, which I thought was so-so, but she enjoyed it.
My younger daughter is now 5. She doesn’t tolerate chapter books nearly as well. Short chapters, yes – stuff like Henry and Mudge, and I’m about to try her on Magic Treehouse and Junie B. Jones, just to see where she is. She just doesn’t have the same interests and attention span as her big sis, and that’s just fine. Everybody’s different.
I’d try chapters and quit if the kid seems bored. You may find it easier to start with short chapters and work up, but if there’s something you’re dying to try, go for it. I’d also recommend James Stevenson’s books with Grandpa and Wainey if your kid doesn’t cotton to chapters right away; the stories are fairly long, there’s lots of scope for different voices, and they’re cool tall tales.
Ours were later. My son is six and it was only this year he’d sit at all for anything longer. We did manage Captain Underpants younger. He still doesn’t “like” it. His sister probably could have started much earlier, but she is so difficult at bedtime that by the time she is settled down, we don’t have time for chapters.
I was a single parent until my daughter was 5. When she was tiny the only way for me to get any reading done was to read to her. She got whatever I was reading from history books through slightly riske romance novels until she was talking pretty well, then she got chapter books. I don’t think she understood some of the stories until she was about 4, mostly she regarded it as cuddling with mom time. She is now 11 and I still read books to her. She also sometimes reads to me.
I can’t actually remember when I started reading chapter books to my son, who is now a teenager. I do remember that he was reading (and loving) the Boxcar Children series by himself in kindergarten. I also remember a long period when he was three or so when I read and reread every single Berenstain Bears book to him; he never got tired of those books.
I also remember that there were a lot of great picture books out there. Maybe you can start on chapter books sometime soon, but don’t give up on the picture books; some of them really are wonderful. (It’s been a long time so it’s hard to come up with many examples, but two authors that come to mind right away are Chris Van Allsburg – The Polar Express was my favorite of my son’s picture books – and William Steig.)
Anyway, a great little chapter book series to start with is the Catwings series by Ursula Le Guin.
