My 3-year-old’s favorites at the moment are “Berenstain Bears & the Bad Dream,” “When Cats Dream,” (she’s very interested in dreams right now), and “Frozen.”
My 8 year old has been on a Geronimo/Thea Stilton kick for the past year or so. It has been a horrible, horrible year.
She also really likes Nancy Drew and Magic Tree House books.
Definitely, depending on the book. I will leave some of the tricky vocabulary in so that she hears the lovely language, and it’s always a hoot when she drops it into conversation (“Daddy, it IS rather chilly today, wot?”), but too much is just bewildering, so I change it at my whim.
My three year old has been making me read “Willy McSquee and the Pirates Who Loved to Clean” every night, mostly because he likes to hear me sing the songs.
One-year-old is digging Brown Bear, Brown Bear and anything by Sandra Boynton
Yellowval, my son loves the Berensteinbooks. We started with The Bad Dream, because I read in the Amazon reviews that that book would help understand toddlers that a bad dream is just a story in your head and that it is an interesting puzzle to figure out from what real life experiences all the dream pieces come from. That approach worked like charm. Not only did my four year old stop having nighmares, he adopted the oh so cute habit of telling me his dreams.
Then the collectors instinct set in and now he has about 20 Berenstain books. It is no wonder that the Berensteinbooks are in the top twenty of best selling authors, along with JK Rowling and Agatha’s Christie.
Not quite this (yet), but I do edit in another situation, and I feel vaguely guilty about it BUT … I edit stories that are about problems my kid doesn’t have. There are A LOT of toddler books that are about being afraid of the dark/not wanting to go to bed, and often this comes up in a story that is otherwise about something else. My kid is a great bed-goer, and has never been afraid of the dark (sometimes if she’s tired, she’ll ask to put the lights out early so she can go to her “bed cave”). It seems really risky to introduce the topic of being afraid of the dark to her, especially because she’s at the age where she likes to mimic the stories in books.
She is also a great eater and loves veggies, and I don’t particularly want her to start refusing green beans just because she read about it in some book.
Parenting-wise, I’m cool with waiting until we have an actual problem to introduce a story about dealing with that problem, but as a literature lover, I have this nagging feeling that it’s CENSORSHIP. I realize this is a ridiculous conflict to have. 
I just finished reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid to the Boy (6 years old) and he really liked it. We also have subscriptions to Highlights and Ranger Rick Jr., though I think he’s at the point where he’s outgrown RR Jr.
We borrowed The Troll With No Heart in His Body from the library but he wasn’t really very interested in it. I did ready a couple of the stories from it. He is also reading a Scooby Doo chapter book on his own.
We used to edit out words like “die” and “dead” before the kids had any concept of what that meant. We knew they’d learn eventually, but felt no need to introduce the idea in an otherwise benign story. It was tricky sometimes, but an awful lot of people “went away” or “left”. 
We love Julia Donaldson around here; I’ll read her books to the Firebug as long as he wants me to read. Here are my ten favorites, not necessarily in that order:
The Gruffalo (of course)
The Gruffalo’s Child
Tiddler (aka The Fish Who Cried Wolf)*
Room on the Broom
Stick-Man
Zog
A Squash and a Squeeze
What the Ladybug/Ladybird Heard
Tyrannosaurus Drip
The Princess and the Wizard*
*Title depends on whether you’re in the U.K. or the U.S.
And of course, the Axel Scheffler illustrations in all but the last three of those books add to the fun.
My not-quite-two-year-old gets read lots of different stuff, but most often Julia Donaldson/Axel Schaeffler stuff - Gruffalo and Gruffalo’s Child are perennial favourites. Then there’s Scotton’s Russel The Sheep books and classics like The Hungry Caterpillar, Little Bear and Where The Wild Things Are.
My nine-year-old is being read Harry Potter (Goblet of Fire, currently) by her mum, and reads Beast Wars and* Goosebumps* books for herself. I think I’ll give her my Stewart/Riddell Edge Chronicles books after she finishes with Rowling.
ETA:RTFirefly, no *Snail and The Whale? *
Not anymore, but some of our favorites over the years included:
“Oooh yes, it’s Pajama Time! Pajammy to the left…”
or maybe it’s
“Every day Thomas and his coaches puffed along not too fast, not too slow, and stopped at every station.”
Anyway, we read a LOT to our 2.5 year old. I have entire books memorized by now.
His favorites:
Old favorites: the Sandra Boynton books, various Thomas & Friends counting books, Good Night Gorilla, Goodnight Moon, and all sorts of kid informative books on trucks and trains.
Current ones:
[ul]
[li]“Corduroy” and “A Pocket for Corduroy” by Don Freeman[/li][li]“Potty”, “Huggy Kissy” and “Yummy Yucky” by Leslie Patricelli[/li][li]“Good Night, Good Night Construction Site” by Sherry Rinker[/li][li]“I Stink!” by Kate and Jim McMullan (about a garbage truck)[/li][li]Tony Mitton’s Amazing Machines series (“Busy Boats”, “Tough Trucks”, “Dazzling Diggers”, etc…)[/li][li]“Go Dogs Go!” and “Are You My Mother?” by P.D. Eastman[/li][li]A whole raft of potty training and little brother/baby books since we have another one on the way.[/li][/ul]
We just read Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang to our six year old. And this book about rats he’s fixated on. The history and biology of rats. He’s reading parts of it to himself. I applaud his curiosity but I’m tired of the book. My two year old twin girls love anything with babies, and Sandra Boyton, and the four year old wants Goodnight Moon or iI Want My Hat Back* or the stories that Rise of the Guardians is based on.
Tonight, it was “Tes Chausettes sentent la Moufette” by Robert Munsch. The Cub particularly liked when the beavers came to live with Tina’s grandfather.
Goodnight Moon fans who get a little older will get a kick out of Goodnight iPad.
I’m scared now… does every little boy like Thomas the Train? because I really don’t, and thankfully my girls didn’t much, but the boy will likely be exposed to it soon… shudder…
My oldest boy liked Thomas for a short time when he was 4 or so. My middle boy was obsessed with Thomas from 4 - 6. Luckily my youngest was never that interested. Beats the hell out of Caillou though…
We keep checking out the ebook of “Bad Dream” from our library. I need to just pony up the $5 and buy it. It’s been very helpful for my daughter when it comes to understanding dreams as well. She used to panic almost every night because she didn’t want to have a dream. Now we just hear “I had the weirdest dream!” a lot. 
We have probably around 10 Berenstain Bears books, but I’d definitely like to get more. I actually kind of enjoy reading them aloud and the plots are much better than a lot of children’s books.
Hey, it could be worse - she could be reading the Rainbow Fairy books. I read one aloud to my son a few years ago and refused to read any more because they were so badly written. My 7-year-old is now reading them - sometimes I miss the whole reading-aloud thing but in this case I am thankful she is reading independently!
Each of our three sons went through varying degrees of obsessiveness with Thomas the Tank Engine. We still joke now and then about calling an indignation meeting for something that’s annoying us, or say “Cinders and ashes!” or “Oh, my rods and couplings!” when we don’t want to use stronger language.
The SF fans might get more of a kick out of Goodnight, Dune