Run Out and Get Me a Book for a Four Year Old Child!

Cafe Society
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No, don’t take the title literally - recommendations will suffice! (For those not familiar with the Marx Brothers, the thread title’s a variation on a line that Groucho, as Rufus T. Firefly, says in Duck Soup.)

The Firebug, who’s approaching his fourth birthday, has got an insatiable appetite for new books these days, and he’s moving up the ladder in terms of what holds his interest when we read it to him. So I can really use a LOT of suggestions for books to read to him during the next several months to a year, until he learns to read for himself. (Which is coming, sooner or later, but who knows when. :slight_smile:

Here’s where he is, right now, reading-wise:

Stuff that’s right in his wheelhouse these days: the bulk of the Seuss oeuvre, as well as pretty much all of the wonderful Julia Donaldson/Axel Scheffler collaborations.

Stuff that he still likes, but is more of a brief diversion: the Gerald and Piggie books by Mo Willems, and the “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie” series. (Not really looking for recommendations in this range, but just to give you an idea of what he’s already all but beyond now.)

Stuff that’s a stretch but that he can sometimes manage: Dr. Seuss’ prose books - like The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins and Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Somewhat to my surprise, he also enjoyed it as I read James Thurber’s The Thirteen Clocks to him over the course of several evenings. (It had just enough pictures to help him get through - a pair of pages that are nothing but text are still hard for him to sit through. He can deal with a lot of text per picture, but he still needs his pictures.)

I haven’t tried to be all-inclusive here, but just included examples that I figure most parents of kids in this age range will be familiar with.

With that, I’ll open the floor for suggestions. What are/were you guys reading to your kids when they were in about this zone?

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My 3,5 and 7 year olds all love Elephant Elements. Deceptively simple - great book for a beginning reader too when he gets to that stage.

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Do you go to the library?

Tons of books there that you can see if he likes without the expense of purchasing.

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Curious George
Inch and Miles - John Wooden

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Animalia by Graeme Base
(maybe too old for this but) But Not the Hippopotamus by Sandra Boyton

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Captain Underpants/Ugg and Gook
The Charlie Brown 'Cyclopedia (may be out of print)

And - joke books. My son loves, loves, loves joke books, and it has the added bonus of helping with “thinking around corners” and lots of laughing time with Mom and Dad.

Of course, you’ll get the best mileage out of booger and other gross jokes, but many joke books are available for the younger set that don’t include those things. And when they “get” a joke (sometimes at a later time) the pure joy of them discovering it is funny on their own is priceless.

My son seems to enjoy non-fiction titles more than fiction - may be a personal thing, but I think it’s a boy thing.

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The My Father’s Dragon trilogy by Ruth Stiles Gannett. It’s the best way to get a little kid started on chapter read-alouds that I know of. :slight_smile:

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Dangit, this is exactly what I was going to recommend! It’s a wonderful alphabet book with gorgeous illustrations and complicated vocabulary (“Jovial Jackals Juggling Jars of Jelly,” that sort of thing). A picture of the author as a young boy is hidden somewhere in every illustration. And best of all, each illustration contains dozens of objects that begin with the letter in question, ranging from the simple (J contains those jars of jelly) to the incredibly obscure (D contains a picture of a Dr. Who killer robot somewhere in the background).

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True, but speaking from experience, picking books off the shelves at random is a less than ideal way of finding books that the rascal likes.

And while I can ask the librarians for recommendations, the disadvantage of that is that they’re recommending the same books to all the other parents, too, which makes it a challenge to find a copy through the library.

A year or so ago, for instance, when he was more in the optimal range for the Gerald and Piggie books, it was hard to find them in the library because the librarians were always recommending them.

A thread like this solves both problems, IME. I can look for these books at the library, the system will probably have most of them, and they probably won’t be checked out all the time.

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I’ve must have bought at least five copies of Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that type for friends having kids. (Kids can moo along!) Actually, I like anything by Doreen Cronin. I also find Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French to be very cute.

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Good points. I actually already reserved dangermom’s suggestion this morning at my library for my 4 year old. While a girl, and very much likes Pinkalicious and Fancy Nancy, I think the adventure tales will entice her.

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Frog And Toad Together, and more specifically, the short story within called “Cookies”. Guaranteed to crack up any young child.

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*No, David! * by David Shannon.

My mother taught pre-kindergarten (Head Start type stuff; real school, and she’s a certified teacher) , and pre-k special ed for 20 some-odd years, and she said that she had to buy a new copy of this book for her classroom every year because the kids read it and enjoyed it so much that it got destroyed every year.

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There’s always Boynton. I’m particularly fond of Hippos Go Berserk (why, yes, I read childrens books). She has stuff appropriate for a variety of age ranges.

And keep Ursula Vernon in mind for later on. She has a weirdly wonderful sense of humour. Diggeris definitely for adults, but Dragonbreath is written for kids.

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Four years old? My son cracked up (and still does) at Amelia Bedelia. Figures of speech are great at that age.

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If your throat can handle the Grover Voice, the Non-Elmo version of theMonster at the End of this Book.

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My son loved al lthe “Frog and Toad” books by Arnold Lobel. Especially:

  1. Toad’s bathing suit, and

  2. The snail delivering a letter.

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The kids and I like:

He Came with the Couch

The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau

Knuffle Bunny, of course

Ginger Finds a Home, and other books by Charlotte Voake

Olivia - another “of course”

The Big Orange Splot

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I’m particularly fond of the picture of Gilgamesh on the G spread.

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That was my all-time favorite when I was four years old. “DON’T TURN THE PAGE!!!”