Read Aloud Journal
September 2018
The BFG, by Roald Dahl
This was a total hit with our 3 older kids (ages 3, 6, 8). I started reading it on a 40 min car ride which was a great way to get them hooked on it. It took us about 3 weeks to get through, but every time I suggested it the kids we keen to hear more.
Because of the unusual way the BFG speaks it gives the kids some lovely new ‘words’ that they can use with each other; we are still hearing about crockadowndillies and snozzcumbers.
I really recommend this a read aloud to get your family into the habit. Most of the chapters are short enough to get through in 10 minutes. It has a good amount of dialogue (especially if you can get through the first few chapters). The characters are memorable, but there are not too many for young children to have to keep track of.
We are going to keep going with Roald Dahl as once we finished this the kids were asking to hear Matilda.
October 2018
Matilda, by Roald Dahl
This was another home-run for us. The three older kids totally loved it, and the little one is now getting in on the action asking to see the pictures.
I think the stand out character was the Trunchbull. Of course, we all love Matilda and the kids did seem to really like her magic powers. But the Trunchbull is just such an unbelievable character. To think of a teacher hoisting children in the air by their hair, or bellowing into the face of a boy to eat chocolate cake is just unreal.
It worked well for us as a follow up to ‘The BFG’.
October-November 2018
The Witches, by Roald Dahl
After having 2 success with books that some of the kids were already a little bit familiar, I thought we’d branch out and try ‘Black Beauty‘. I had never read it in full (only an abridgment) and was keen to give it a go. I actually thought it was going okay, but it seems we either still need to have some illustrations or we are just hooked on Roald Dahl. After a few chapters the kids were asking for a change and somehow we settled on ‘The Witches‘.
The kids really got into this one again. There were some points which one kid was too scared to hear. At those points, I skimmed ahead, tried to offer a brief summary or give a hint as to what was coming ahead.
I actually had a lot of fun giving a horrible, hammed up voice to the Grand High Witch. It’s fun to put on a scary tone and try to scare the crap out of your kids.
November 2018
The Hollow under the tree, by Cary Fagan
The kids were demanding we read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, so of course, wanting to follow their lead and keep the enthusiasm going I succumbed and started reading it aloud to them. However a few pages in I realised I really wanted to read them, The Hollow Under the Tree, a short chapter book I had read myself. I felt like it was short enough and the pace was quick enough that I could get them hooked.
I really wanted to read it to them because of the main character, Sadie, a girl who lives with her father in Toronto in 1925. She is feisty, tough, adventurous and clever. Sadie finds a lost circus lion in the park and begins to make it her pet, along with a tag-along friend. I felt my 6-year-old would really relate to Sadie. My girl is always finding things and collecting them, she has also tried to make a pet of a multitude of creepy crawlies she can find in our garden.
It took a little convincing and I had to persist against moderate whinging, but once we got through the first four chapters (which are not long) the kids were hooked. Not just the 6 yr old, but the 4 yr old and 8 yr old were keen to find out what would happen to Sadie and her lion.
November – December 2019
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl
Yes, after a single solitary reading choice by Mum, we went straight back to Roald Dahl.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a huge hit with the kids. It is also really fun for me to read out loud, as there are some interesting voices to use. The toughest bit for all of us were long Oompa Loompa songs. While the lyrics are interesting, they are just a bit too tricky for 4- and 6-year-olds to understand. And once I lose them it’s all over.
December 2018
Bah, Humbug!, by Michael Rosen
I was really keen to have this as our Christmas read-aloud, but alas, we didn’t get to it until deep into the Christmas season. I was really excited about it because, after skimming a few pages, it seemed to be a clever, entertaining way of introducing Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to the kids.
I actually have to say this was not a success for us. I found it difficult to read aloud to my kids mainly because of the structure. The book describes a family who go to watch the son perform in a school play of A Christmas Carol. We jump between the play and the family often as ( I assume) the author wants to compare the two scenarios. A play alone is difficult enough to read aloud to young children, when adding in another plot it is impossible.
So we did not get to finish this book. Christmas came and went and I couldn’t find it in me to continue the uphill struggle.
I wish I had finished the book myself though. The 8-year old did and he really liked it.
January 2019
Fabio the World’s Greatest Flamingo Detective: The Case of the Missing Hippo, by Laura James
There was no other reason for choosing this book, other than it looked super funny, and the right length for us for a read aloud. In general, this was well received by the kids, despite it taking weeks to get through a book the 8-year-old read to himself in about half an hour.
Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White
This we listened to in audiobook format (read by E.B. White himself) while driving around over the summer holidays. The older kids really liked it. They seemed to follow well despite there being a few days in between listening sessions.
This book holds up really well despite being written decades ago for a very different audience than my kids. I think one of the reasons is that kids love being taken away to a simple farm lifestyle, where the children go to school, but their heart is at home with their family and animals.
The characters are also very interesting, especially when voiced by their creator. Wilbur is naive, kind and honest; Charlotte is clever and motherly
I did also get the book version in hopes that the 6-year-old might follow along as she listened, but that didn’t really happen. She just preferred to listen, which is fine.
February-March 2019
Getting back into the school routine was a shock to all of our systems and family read-aloud time seemed to get lost amongst the dozens of other things to be done in the morning. We still did a lot of picture books with the younger kids. And the 6-year-old got really into the Treehouse series which a parent would read aloud to her at bedtime.
It just goes to show that if you want to do things like reading to your kids you HAVE to carve the time out, you HAVE to budget the minutes of the day and put off less important things.
We did manage to get through Winnie The Pooh (eventually, it seemed to take weeks) and the kids did really love it. Despite it sometimes being a few days between reading sessions, they still kept up with the story and characters.
March 2019
Fortunately, The Milk, by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Chris Riddell
This is a terrific read-aloud for kids 4-10. The story is really fast-paced with lots of characters and twists which keeps their interest. The illustrations are very helpful for younger kids who may struggle to keep track of all the different characters.
The only negative of this book as a read-aloud is that it isn’t divided up into chapters which might give a natural place to break the reading up over a few days if you don’t have the hour or so to sit and read it through in one sitting. But we didn’t let that stop us and the kids still seemed to keep up with where we were up to over the week it took us to get through it.
Pippi Longsticking, by Astrid Lingren, illustrated by Lauren Child
A few years ago my oldest picked this up at the library and started reading it straight away. I almost tried to convince him not to borrow it, probably out of laziness. It is a huge, heavy book and I’m the one who lugs the library bag to and fro. But I kept my mouth shut and got really hooked and read it
So when I remembered this a few weeks ago, I thought it would probably be a good one for a family read-aloud. I was right! This has been a very popular book for the 3 older kids. They were asking: “Can we read Pippi?” and couldn’t seem to get enough, which is a great motivation for me.
I think they liked how she was independent and thought differently, though logically for a child. I think lots of kids dream of living in a world where they can spend time with animals, eating what they like, not going to school and having adventures where grown-ups often come off second best.
April 2019
Diva and Flea: a Parisian tale, by Mo Willems and Tony DiTerlizzi
We have loved lots of Mo Willems books: The Pigeon series, the Elephant and Piggie series, Nanette’s Baguette. So I thought I’d better search my library catalogue to if there were any others we would like and came across this one.
It turned out to be a brilliant book for a family read-aloud. It had plenty of really good illustrations which helps the younger kids, but the story was such that the older kids were very attentive.
The story is about a little house dog in Paris who meets a street cat who is a flaneur. They form a friendship and they introduce each other to their worlds. Diva leaves the safety of her courtyard and gate to visit the Eiffel Tower and Flea learns that some brooms don’t need to be feared and that some animals get food given to them every day.
We loved it so much and given that it’s a shorter story we whipped through it in only a few sessions.
May 2019
The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown
To read the full review of this AWESOME book click here.
May-June 2019
Danny The Champion of The World, by Roald Dahl
I read this to Jude about 4 or 5 years ago as a bedtime book and I wondered why this book is not more popular. I know Roald Dahl has many terrific books, but in my opinion, this is truly one of his best.
This time around all the kids listened and loved it. In fact, it was so well-liked that the kids sat around one Saturday afternoon and listened to me read it for an hour and a half (when they might normally ask to watch a movie).
I think part of the appeal is that Danny really describes the details of his life with his father and the reader (or listener) can fully picture their caravan and the filling station and Hazell’s Wood and all the characters. The book is set in rural England in the 1960’s or 1970’s and because of this young readers are given an insight into a much simpler and cosier life from the recent past. They can easily compare their life to Danny’s and think about what they have that he doesn’t and maybe more importantly what Danny has in his life that modern kids are missing out on.
Ultimately the book is presenting a wonderful relationship between a child and father. Roald Dahl has really gotten inside the mind of a child and understood what they would dream their father would really be like, and then given Danny’s dad, William, all those same characteristics and traits. Danny’s dad is spontaneous, fun, brave, smart, strong and reasonable. He speaks highly of Danny’s late mother and he gets furious at the teacher who inflicts corporal punishment on Danny. Probably most importantly is that he treats Danny as an equal, and that’s how all kids want to be treated by adults.
June 2019
The Wild Robot Escapes, by Peter Brown
After the huge success and enjoyment of The Wild Robot, everyone was champing at the bit for this sequel. The story opens with Roz, our wild robot, being introduced to a family farm where she will have multiple responsibilities for which she has to learn a range of new skills. She also has to keep her past a secret as she is certain it could cause her trouble.
This is as far as we got (about 30 chapters) before the book became due at the library and we couldn’t renew it because there were 4 reservations pending. We’re back on the queue to re-borrow when they get more copies in.
Nim’s Island, by Wendy Orr
This was borrowed as a CD audiobook and we started listening to it in the car as a family. It takes a while for us to be able to listen to a book in that way as we have to wait for all the kids to be in the car at the same time, and we have to be traveling a distance that makes it worth putting the story on. The issue being I avoid this situation as much as possible as it is terribly stressful having all the kids trapped in the car to extended periods of time. Sundays on the way to the grandparents’ house are probably the one session we can count on.
I got this mainly because, from reviews, I thought my older girl would love this setting and the story. Nim is a girl who lives on the remotest of idyllic islands with her scientist father, Jack. They have hidden away from the world and survive mostly on what the island provides. Nim’s pets are an iguana and a sea lion, she doesn’t go to school, she has almost unrestrained freedom to roam the island.
We didn’t realise until the CD finished that the book was missing the second CD for us to complete listening to the story. The library didn’t have another copy, but they did have it available on Borrow Box, and eBook and eAudiobook app you can use for free. So lead to our new mode of listening to family read-aloud books, which I will devote an entire blog post to (stay tuned).
July 2019
The Wayward Witch and the Feelings Monster (Polly and Buster book #1) and The Mystery of the Magic Stones, (Polly and Buster book #2), by Sally Rippin
My big boy read these when they were new releases and recently finished the third and final book in the series. This prompted me to think that Polly and Buster should be on our family read-aloud list.
Turns out they are very popular and we had to reserve the eAudiobooks and wait for them to become available. Fortunately, that didn’t take too long and we were able to listen as we drove around in the school holidays.
For those not familiar with the series, Polly is a sub-par witch whose kind and loyal best friend, Buster, just happens to be a monster. Witches have a general dislike for monsters, treating them as lower class, unrefined, troublesome creatures.
An incident on a school excursion sets off a series of events that puts Polly in some very difficult situations. The reader is taken along on the journey as Polly and Buster try to find a peaceful resolution to the Witches Vs Monsters problem.
As I suspected this has been a real hit with the kids. Jude has been happy to experience the story again. By ‘reading’ it as an eAudiobook we are missing the illustrations which appear in the books, however, this has only just occurred to me and I don’t think we are really missing them at all.
August 2019
The Wild Robot Escapes, by Peter Brown
We started this a few months ago after we finished Danny, Champion of the World. After getting 30 chapters in we had to return it to the library as it was due and there were 4 reserves on it, so we couldn’t renew it. Finally, the library got more copies in and were able to restart this as our read-aloud.
After loving The Wild Robot so much I was concerned that the sequel would be a let down (as some sequels can be). But I’m very happy to report that we absolutely and totally loved The WIld Robot Escapes. It had the exact same feel, flow, sophistication, honesty, and emotion.
Our robot, Roz, finds herself working on a family farm, where she protects the cows from wolves, manages the other machinery and tells tall tales to the children of a robot and her gosling son living on a deserted island. All the while Roz continues to think of finding her son and returning home to their island. The reader is taken on a wonderful adventure as we follow her thrilling escape.
The emotion of this book is remarkable. And, as I mentioned in my earlier post about The Wild Robot, it is all the more accessible and less threatening for children to deal with heavy themes of family relationships, death, danger, loss because the characters are not human.
These books are an absolute must, they are modern children’s classics.
January 2020
We got through the complete audio version of Matt Stanton’s Funny Kid series on Borrow Box. It was a huge hit. On a couple of occasions the kids were just sitting around the stereo listening to it like they were a family in the 1930’s sitting around the wireless.
During Isolation (April-May 2020)
Toto: The Wizard of Oz as Told by the Dog, by Michael Morpurgo – Despite being wuite a long book and based on an older book, the kids really liked this one.
Boot: Small Robot Big Adventure, by Shane Hegarty and Ben Mantle – the is the first in a series that so far has 3 books.
