Monday, May 11, 2009

Reading with the Kids

Have you ever had really fond memories of a book, only to re-read it and think it sucks? This keeps happening to me with children's books. At some point after I had read some Harry Potter I thought I would have a quick review of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It was totally not as good as I thought it was when I was young.

Also, I have been reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume to my son at night. I know I liked it as a kid, and I think my brother and sister liked it too. It's kind of a minor American classic. Boring. I keep hoping the boy will forget to ask me to read it. And I may have been known to whine a little when forced to continue.

Some things have improved with age though. We (me and my two kids) have read or listened to in the past year: Ramona the Pest, Ramona and her Mother, Ramona and her Father, Ramona the Brave, Ramona Forever (I'm not kidding you, we are Ramona CRAZY) Ribsy, Henry and Ribsy, Runaway Ralph, plus probably a few more by Beverly Cleary.

I love that woman now maybe even more than I did as a kid. If I didn't love Beverly Cleary there is no freaking way I would read all these books at night or listen to them in the car. I could not take this much of just any author. I kinda feel at this point that I have lived on Klickitat Street myself.

4 comments:

Melissa said...

I loved all the Beverly Cleary books! C and I have been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...although his interest in waning.

Lindsay said...

Melissa, we have done part of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the car and the kids liked it but have kind of forgotten about it. I like the book better than either of the movies.

Stimey said...

I like all the Roald Dahl books, but I especially love Danny, Champion of the World and Fantastic Mr. Fox. Both are amazing.

Swistle said...

I loved all those books too, and I don't DARE re-read them! I re-read The Boxcar Children (after being TOTALLY ENCHANTED in elementary school) and I was all, like, "This is NOTHING like I remembered." Same with Charmed Life, which seemed SO OBVIOUS as an adult even though it was a TOTAL SURPRISE when I was a child.

One that I THINK held up (why can't I remember? have I had too much to drink, perhaps?) was the E. Nesbit book "Five Children and It." It wasn't QUITE as good as it was when I was a child, but it was still PRETTY GREAT.