My children might now be reading the likes of Shatter Me, Red Queen and New Moon independently, but I have very fond memories of reading stories to them.

Judith Kerr’s Mog books and The Tiger Who Came to Tea; Spot the Dog, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, loads from Usborne’s touchy-feely That’s not my… series and the wonderful My Mum book by Anthony Browne were firm favourites. A plethora of Julia Donaldson books including The Gruffalo, The Smartest Giant in Town, The Highway Rat, What the Ladybird Heard and Room on the Broom also featured regularly as bedtime (and daytime!) stories.

Julia Donaldson and the Gruffalo

A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood. A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good…

It looks like we weren’t alone in our love of Julia Donaldson books. A survey commissioned by The Works reveals that nearly 20 percent of parents will choose one of her titles as the first book they read to their child. The modern classic The Gruffalo tops the list and is selected by one in eight parents. Released in 1999, The Gruffalo has sold over 13 million copies to date.

My girls loved the Gruffalo. We had the book in different versions (as well as The Gruffalo’s Child), had lots of merchandise and even had the Match and Memory Board Game!

The top 10 first books parents read to their children:

1. The Gruffalo – Julia Donaldson
2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar – Eric Carle
3. That’s Not My…  – Fiona Watt
4. Guess How Much I Love You – Sam McBratney
5. Peppa Pig
6. Spot – Eric Hill
7. The Tale of Peter Rabbit – Beatrix Potter
8. Dear Zoo – Rod Campbell
9. Winnie the Pooh – A. A. Milne 
10. Harry Potter – J. K. Rowling

The research highlighted that 44% of parents read to children from birth. This is certainly what we did, and I’m convinced it fostered my children’s love of reading.

The First Books We Remember

A certain series featuring a boy wizard tops the charts in terms of the books that we remember as our first read. The survey highlights that 5% of the population cite one of the J.K. Rowling books as the first they remember reading either independently or having read to them. 

The second book on the list is Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree followed by the author’s Famous Five series. Winnie the Pooh and The Very Hungry Caterpillar complete the top five.

Roald Dahl features prominently in the top 10 with The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory all making the list with 13% of the respondents recalling something written by the author. For me it was George’s Marvellous Medicine.

Gruffalo versus a Caterpillar

Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar – which has sold over 50 million copies since its 1969 release – is the only book to feature in the top five of both lists. That is it’s the book we most remember being read to us and one of the first books we read to our own children. I certainly remember it on both sides of the fence!

World Book Day 2024

World Book Day, a charity that operates in the UK and Ireland, aims to enrich lives by promoting a love of books and reading. Whilst dressing up has become a big aspect of the annual celebrations there are plenty of other activities and ways to engage from ‘adopting an author’ to redesigning book covers and being a contributing author in ‘story consequences’.

Find out more below:

World Book Day takes place on Thursday, March 7th 2024. The Works are supporting the charity and are encouraging children and parents to bring their £1 book token into stores any time up until March 31st to exchange their token for a book from the World Book Day 2024 range.

You can find out further information here: https://www.theworks.co.uk/page/world-book-day.html

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The Summer Reading Challenge

The annual challenge encourages primary school children to read for pleasure over the summer holidays. During the challenge, participants collect prizes and stickers, play games and, of course, discover a world of great books.

Taking part is simple

Once signed up, children receive their packs and can start collecting special materials, which relate to this year’s theme: Gadgeeters.

Your child simply needs to read six books to complete the challenge and these can be anything that takes their fancy: fact, fiction, poetry, comics, audio books… They log each book completed on their poster and receive a medal and certificate if they successfully finish the challenge.

There are also plenty of activities to extend the fun online including plenty of games: https://summerreadingchallenge.org.uk/games

Meet the Gadgeteers – 2022’s Challenge

This year, The Reading Agency has joined forces with Science Museum Group for a science and innovation-themed challenge. The aim is to inspire children to be imaginative and creative and discover the science that’s all around them in everyday objects.

During the Challenge children join six ‘Gadgeteers’ on a journey of discovery. These fictional characters explore the science behind a host of interests from fashion and technology to cooking and music.

With resources from the Science Museum Group, the Gadgeteers Summer Reading Challenge also features lots of ideas for great experiments and activities. 

Additionally, there’s an accompanying book collection curated by the team. These fun, science-themed recommendations are packed with facts and tales of innovation and creativity to make science and reading accessible to everyone.

The challenge is taking place now and finishes on September 17th, 2022. For more details visit: https://summerreadingchallenge.org.uk/.

Taking part in The Summer Reading Challenge, is just one of my Summer Holiday Challenges. You can read about the rest here.

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World Book Day and Dressing Up

I’m a massive advocate of nurturing a lifelong love of reading. I also like the idea of anything that promotes this. However, the whole dressing up rigmarole that accompanies World Book Day (WBD) often eclipses its aim. All the mums I’ve spoken to seem pretty unanimous in their weariness about this aspect of WBD – “I just need something cheap and easy” is the cry.  

First there’s the process of deciding on the character. This is labour intensive. I listed all the great books my children had read and suggested characters from these. However, every idea was vetoed. Then we had the discussion about why they couldn’t go as film characters. At 11, my eldest just wants to be the same as her friends and dress up as Thing One, Thing Two and Thing Three despite not enjoying the Dr Seuss books.   

Finding the time

Life is busy. I don’t really have much time (and crucially ability) to make three costumes. We try to find stuff at home that can be used and adapted, but that only gets us so far, so I end up having to spend money to complete costumes. That’s another downside; there’s a lot of pressure on time poor parents to throw money at the whole thing.

Also some children hate dressing up. Maria was all set on being Delphie from one of the Darcey Bussell books and then panicked that “the boys would laugh at her for being in a ballerina dress.” I’ve talked her round.

Other things to do on World Book Day

There are umpteen dressing up events at our school throughout the year, perhaps the focus of WBD could be on other activities…

Some ideas

My children have been set a number of reading tasks by school to complete. It’s more interesting than it sounds…

Michael Rosen’s suggestion

One of our favourites, Michael Rosen, got back to me on Twitter and suggested Adopt an author

Adopt an author: each class chooses an author for the day, find out everything they can about that author, make posters, read out bits of their books, read whole books. Classes work out how to do a presentation of a book and do the pres. for another class.— Michael Rosen (@MichaelRosenYes) March 2, 2020

He says to be imaginative when presenting a book to another class. For example, do ‘freeze frames’, act out a scene, do a mime from a scene from the book while someone narrates, do ‘guess the book’ shows, quizzes, mock interviews with the ‘author’ or a character from the book.

Get in a guest author

The money that would be spent on costumes could contribute towards getting in a guest author. As the late Jonny Zucker said in an article for The Guardian:

…if an author visit goes well, some pupils will get more of a writing confidence-boost in one day than they normally would in a whole term; some will crack how to plot a story and will go off to compose their first magnum opus; and some will discover that writing can actually be fun.

Jonny Zucker

Competitions and games

• The children at my friend’s daughter’s school are redesigning book covers for a competition. What a lovely activity and something that helps children translate words to pictures.

• Play consequences – Everyone in class gets the chance to become a contributing author in this traditional parlour game. Perhaps the resulting ‘story’ can then be expanded and edited.   
  
• Read part of an unfamiliar text together as a class and then each child writes the rest of the story.  

Get creative

Get them to channel their inner Roald Dahl and make their own version of a Gobblefunk dictionary of descriptive made-up words

Use you library

Get involved with your local library. Many libraries run special events for World Book Day for children of all ages. Keep an eye on your local library’s social media channels and website for details of events. Here are some for Surrey libraries

What was decided

This year, after much deliberation, we’ll have Delphie from Delphie and the Magic Ballet Shoes, the eponymous Matilda and Katniss Everdeen from Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.

Finally…

If it all gets too much just remember the dad who took inspiration from the Argos catalogue…

You might also like:

The Gruffalo Tops the Charts as World Book Day 2024 Approaches

The Summer Reading Challenge

Should Fairy Tales be Banned?

The Benefits of Reading as a Family – guest post

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Here Simply Glass Wipe Boards discusses five key benefits for families who read.

Reading helps children to expand their vocabulary

Exposing children to more words will help them to expand their vocabulary and their understanding of the world. That’s why it’s important to establish a regular reading routine with your children, no matter how young or old they are.

If your child is struggling, it’s crucial to read at a pace that suits them and pick a book that they’re comfortable with. Once they’re more confident with the basics, it’s likely that they’ll naturally transition to more complicated texts.

If you’re looking for inspiration on books to read with your family, here’s what other kids all over the country are currently reading:

Reading helps to reduce symptoms of depression

During those dark days, it can be difficult to think of a way out. However, research has shown that reading can help with these low feelings.

Picking up a book can help you to escape the harsh realities of life and help you to see the world from a different perspective. No matter whether you prefer a real-life hero story or a fictional sci-fi tale, those little breaks from reality can help you to manage your depression in a healthy way.

Some feel-good books you can enjoy with your kids include:

• Wonder – R.J Palacio
• Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life – James Patterson & Chris Tebbetts
• Rules – Cynthia Lord

Reading can help you to bond as a family

Between the morning school run and after-school rush, it can be difficult to find a quiet moment to spend with your children. However, if you introduce a reading routine into your day it can help you to spend a little bit more time with your children and form a closer bond.

A popular time to get into a book is right before bedtime. Not only can this help you to get closer to your child, but it can also help you to wind down and switch off before it’s time to sleep.

Reading can help you to get a better nights’ sleep

Research shows that using electronic devices before bed can keep your brain awake and prevent you from getting a good nights’ sleep. To avoid this, you and your family can use your bedtime story to prepare yourself for the night ahead.

To make the most of this time, make sure there are no distractions around before you start your book. Switch off phones, tablets and TVs and make sure there is minimal background noise so that you can get stuck into your book with ease.

Reading increases health and wellbeing on the whole

On the whole, reading can have a positive impact on health and wellbeing in kids and adults. Although it might be difficult to kickstart these habits as adults, you only need to read for 30 minutes a week or more to experience these benefits.

To help you and your family get started, here are a few easy reading tasks you and your kids can work through over the coming months:

Image sources: Simply Glass Wipe Boards

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Summer Reading Challenge 2018 – Mischief Makers

Aimed at children aged 4–11 years, of all reading abilities, the Summer Reading Challenges encourage children to carry on enjoying their reading outside of school during the holidays. They borrow books and earn stickers and other rewards throughout the challenge. The books they choose can be anything that takes their fancy: fact books, fiction books, poetry books or even audio books. They need to read six books to complete the challenge and if they do, they get a certificate. Our local schools get involved so there is the option for the certificate to be presented in assembly. My eldest loved this!

https://youtu.be/18LIsnh9CNE

This year’s challenge is called Mischief Makers and features all the favourite characters from The Beano (to commemorate Beano’s 80th anniversary). Once signed up, children will receive a Beanotown map and as they read their books they’ll follow a trail to uncover the hidden treasure.

Most libraries in Scotland have already started the challenge and the majority in England and Wales will start the challenge on Saturday 14th July 2018. There’s a mini challenge for under fours available in most libraries.

The Summer Reading Challenge is produced by charity The Reading Agency. For more information go to: www.summerreadingchallenge.org.uk

Best childrens’ books of all time

It’s a matter of great debate. My daughter Sofia, who is nine, likes a mix of modern and classic. She absolutely loves David Walliams, Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, J.K. Rowling and Andy Stanton’s Mr Gum books.

According to research by cartridgesave.co.uk, which has just launched its ‘Gift of Books‘ campaign, the classics still have a firm place in all our hearts. Their survey of 2000 people – of all ages – saw Enid Blyton’s Famous Five (Five on a Treasure Island -1942) take top spot as the nation’s favourite childhood book.

The top 10

What’s you favourite childhood book?

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