I Wish I Were a Dog

I Wish I Were a Dog by Lydia Monks

As you can see from the front cover,  this is advertised as being by 'The Illustrator of 'What the Ladybird Heard'.  Which I always feel is a bit harsh, if you write a book, I'm not sure how desperate you'd be to be selling yourself as the person who drew the pictures in another?

Anyway, this book is both written and illustrated by Lydia Monks - who is perhaps better known as the woman who has illustrated a number of other books including the Julia-Donaldson-penned 'What the Ladybird Heard'.  However, I found this book way before I was familiar with Julia Donaldson, having bought this for the child of the couple who lived in the flat below me when I was being an (im)mature student doing my Masters, and so am quite pleased when I recently discovered it has made its way prominently back onto shop shelves.

So the general premise of the book is that there's a cat, and the cat is pretty hacked off because dogs get to do fun things. Such as:

However, after making his case, the cat's un-named owner basically slates dogs as idiotic creatures who eat old bones and have to do as they're told, whilst extolling the virtues of being a cat.  So it's basically a 'love who you are' sort of book, though given that not much of a case gets put forward for being a dog I think there ought to be a sequel called something along the lines of 'Seriously Dog, I was just saying those things to get the Cat to stop complaining, you're alright really'.

As can be seen in the pictures above, the illustrations are bold and uncluttered, and the text is relatively minimal making this especially ideal to read to younger children (my 2 year old loves it, but my 4 year old will occasionally listen and gets more of the humour behind it) and an easy choice for a short story before bed.

Enjoyment for adults to read to children: 4/5 (knocking a point off as the rhythm of the words doesn't always work and sometimes trips me up)
Enjoyment for children: 4/5
Glumness of cat at not being a dog: 90% decreasing to 0%
Mice that cat has caught but hasn't seemed to have done anything unpleasant to quite yet: 3

Bears in the Night

Bears in the Night by Stan and Jan Berenstain

It is night-time.  There are bears.  They are up to something.

This is a fairly accurate synopsis that covers this entire book.  This is a bedtime favourite in our house, winning on simplicity, its short length and the opportunity to make owl noises several times.

The story starts off with our ursine protagonists all in bed together, following lights out time.  They have other plans though... "In bed.... out of bed..... to the window".

With relatively few words on each page and some great illustrations of the titular large omnivorous mammals following sundown, the story is wonderfully clear, and the clever use of repetition (in general each page picks up from the last one and then adds a bit) makes this very easy for young children to follow and quite enjoyable to read aloud as an adult.  The pages above show the adventures of the bears before the key point of the story, which sends them all scurrying back the way they came and ending up in the same place they started, but in a fun way rather than anything remotely scary (scary adventures with the Berenstein bears that still un-nerve my 4 year old do come up in 'The Spooky Old Tree'!).

This makes a great option for 'the last book before bedtime', particularly with its night-time theme and the fact that *warning- spoilers* the bears all end up tucked up in bed at the end.

Parents' reading-out loud enjoyment rating: 4/5
Child's enjoyment of story with additional owl noises included: 5/5
Bears out of bed: 7/7
Need for child-proof locks on bedroom windows: High

Oh No, George!

Oh No, George! by Chris Haughton

George is a dog.  This much is fairly obvious from the cover of this book by Chris Haughton.  George lives in a world where he is about 5 times the size of his owner, Harris, who despite his better judgement goes out, leaving George the massive pink dog alone in the house unsupervised.  Alas, George the magenta mongrel is no stranger to temptation...

Ultimately, this is a story about temptation, failure, forgiveness and redemption, with a cliffhanger ending which I won't spoil.  This is a fun book to read aloud with a child, as George the dog succumbs to temptation a number of times and so after asking the question "What will George do?" your child can happily respond "Oh No, George!" as George fails to control his more primal urges.  The story very clearly highlights that George knows that he's been naughty but doesn't dwell on this, providing George with a chance to try to behave properly, right up to the final page (where both of my children have decided it would likely conclude with an 'Oh No, George!' moment).

I've only docked a point below for 'child's enjoyment of story' as it can perhaps place excessive emphasis on the visual, specifically on the 'Oh No, George!' parts - for a younger audience the art style may leave them wondering what exactly is going on when George is demolishing the pot plants for example but really this is a minor concern (and can be swiftly dealt with by some good sound effects!).

The illustrations do a great job of conveying the story with the paper-cut-like images, mostly of George the rose-coloured rascal  but also the green people who inhabit his world... and Cat, who can be found hiding in the background for most of the first half of the book.  Poor Cat.  I can't completely work out just how the original illustration are done - on the odd occasion there even seems to be some curious pixellation making it look like they were done on Deluxe Pain on the Amiga in the 1990s...

Overall, the book is simple and funny for both children and adults alike, with the whole book taking just a handful of minutes to read (always a winner for bedtime stories!).

Parent's reading-out-loud enjoyment rating: 5/5
Child's enjoyment of story: 4/5
Preferred voice to use for George: Ray Winstone
Cakes consumed by dogs: 1 out of a possible 2

Images used here taken from Chris Haughton's website

An introduction of sorts

Once upon a time...

There was a man, and the man had children.  The man bought a lot of books to read to his children, some of which were good, and some of which were not.  However, the man soon realised that actually some of the books that he thought were good to start with became less enjoyable with repeat readings, and conversely some of the less good ones were actually more fun to read again and again.  So he sent his children off to bed and decided to write a blog about it.

Here Calvin's dad (from the medium-defining comic strip Calvin and Hobbes) enduring the same situation so many of us have been in... "what story do you want tonight?"  "This one!"  "Groan... not that one again...".  I'm sure that Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie is a classic book, but sometimes books that ought to be just aren't that fun to read out loud to children.

So here I am and I'm going to write about books and how fun they are to read.  I have two children, two girls aged 4 and 2, so I have more than one test subject and sometimes the benefit of coming back to stories after a long time away from them!  I have both British and American heritage, but I live in the UK so most of these will be books that should be easily available - and relatively current - in the UK.