Good books for kids?

[jollysmith123]

I find it very important that kids get into the habit of reading. Could anyone suggest some good books that they can start of with. Books that are simple, with good language, and interesting too.

[stjohnjulie]

What age range/reading level are we talking about?

[cybele]

Child's interests would be good to know too.

[jollysmith123]

From the age of 4 to 8. I need some books for the younger kids. Books they can start off with.

[Lendar]

You need to be more specific. Some kids with 7-8 years are reading encyclopedias, but some are still with picture books.

[stjohnjulie]

That is a pretty big age range... A lot of 4 year old are not reading, or only reading sight words. When my guy was little, we had the 'Bob Books' and that was a good starter.

I also read to him A LOT from a young age. As he grew older, I would read slower and point to all of the words as I read them.

I prefer Dr. Seuss myself, but I also really liked the brightly colored "MY FIRST..." books. They had nice pictures and single words under the pictures.

By the time my guy was 8 he was reading a lot of longer chapter books and he liked the A to Z mysteries and LOVED the Diary of the Wimpy Kid books.

By 9 he was reading the Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Uglies, etc. Even though he will read just about anything, when he was about 8 is when he really started to read books of a certain genre that he prefered. Amazon made it a little easier for me to pick books for him to try with their recommendations. You tell them what books you like, they make suggestions on others you may like as well.

[cybele]

Again, interests would be really useful.

Sasha is nearly 5 and he loves all books about dinosaurs, fiction and non-fiction, so I could list some awesome dinosaur books, but if your kids have no interest in them, then that wouldn't be very helpful.

Why don't you take them to the library and let them browse, and see what they come up with?

[IADad]

We use the "I'm going to read" series. My now 5 yo likes them a lot and will read them over and over. I know that McMillian and Scholastic both publish good sets too, But the "I'm going to read" are my favorite as they really drill the phonics in a fun way. If you put "Who took the cake" into Google books you can see a sample. It's Who took the cake by Robert Wurzburg. My son is learning to read so fast with them (and others, there's a Batman series he loves, that we read together, I have him read a few then I read, we switch off. Why not go to the bookstore and browse them. My boys love going and picking out books.

[katencam]

I try to find books for Cam which are not complicated stories but have some thought provoking material...We actually read the "The Giving Tree" tonight by Silverstein and had a really long talk about selfishness and friendship and some 4 year old randomness that was not at all connected but still talking!!

[IADad]

Originally Posted by katencam

I try to find books for Cam which are not complicated stories but have some thought provoking material...We actually read the "The Giving Tree" tonight by Silverstein and had a really long talk about selfishness and friendship and some 4 year old randomness that was not at all connected but still talking!!

I love Shel Silverstein's Poems and my older son has some of his anthologies. If you don't know much about him, I'd encourage you to read his biography on Wikipedia.

Last spring (on 4/20) I heard a song by him, and was a little surprised by the subject matter, but considering his background and that he's an equally prolific song writer, it makes sense. I was amazed at the number of well known songs he'd written.