Heh…when I was eight, I think my Dad was reading me The Martian Chronicles and a young-adult history of the Skylab missions. I think some Johnny Dixon mysteries, too. With the original illustrations.
I rather like having a weird family, sometimes. 
wow, that’s… just perfection. thank you!
You know… Thomas & Friends isn’t really that annoying relative to a lot of kids’ TV. The songs are catchy, there’s always a good lesson to the stories, the hero isn’t always right, and in a paroxysm of nerdiness, I learned a LOT about railroads and locomotives through curiosity about Sodor and the locomotives.
Can’t say any of that’s true about say… Ni Hao, Kai Lan or Peppa Pig though.
No problem - saw it on io9 recently.
My 6 year old as well, though she’s also hooked on Cam Jansen.
“If You Give A Cat A Cupcake” by Laura Numeroff and all the others in that series. My kid is really into “Richard Scarry’s Best First Book Ever” too. I’ve dug out some of my old children’s books and one of my son’s favorites is “The Hungry Thing” by Jan Slepian. “The Lorax” and other Doctor Seuss books are always good and of course, Sandra Boynton’s books. Even though my son is now 4 and potty trained, he likes to dig out his book “Potty” by Leslie Patricelli, because he thinks it’s so funny.
Also, what’s wrong with Caillou?
“Bye bye diaper! Hee heeeeheeheeehee!” My son is hysterically amused by the part where the baby sits on the potty with the diaper on and looks shocked, and then takes it off.
Leslie Patricelli cracks me up every time. My daughter has mostly moved on from these books, but I flip through them for laughs when I come across them. It’s amazing how expressive her characters are.
This thread is making me think I’m a complete fascist, because I’m realizing there are a lot of books that we don’t read because I don’t care for them. Don’t get me wrong, we have TONS of books in the house and go to the library often, but I keep a little mental blacklist for books that I find too annoying to bear.