Junie B. Jones, Magic Treehouse, and...?

OK, so final tally is 4 Cam Jansen books, the first Commander Toad book, and Bunnicula. Will get a bunch more at the library probably and report back.

I told sozlet a bit about Bunnicula and she thought it sounded great. She keeps saying, "It's the sweeeetest little bunny... who's a VAMPIRE!!"

She also says thank you to everyone for the great ideas, she's excited.

0 Replies

er, not quite final, decided that hey if we only had to get two more to be eligible for another 4-for-3 batch...

So we also got "My Father's Dragon" and "Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle."

That should hold her for a while.

0 Replies

sozobe wrote:

Cam Jansen looks perfect!

Sozlet's very into the whole detective thing just now. (She's here and wants me to add: "A few days ago she was begging and begging me to play a detective game." She was the detective, I was the distraught client.)

Bought the first 4 at Amazon (they're eligible for the 4-for-3 promotion, so all 4 for $12 + free shipping too, not bad).

Thanks for checking with Duckie, FreeDuck. Lemony Snicket is looking good. Maybe will start with checking 'em out from the library, see how it goes.

If she likes that - there is also my old favorite - Nancy Drew.

0 Replies

Joanna Hurwitz has a series of chapter books on Elisa and her brothers Russell and Marshall. My daughter liked these books. Elisa is similar to Junie B. and sometimes gets into trouble.

0 Replies

sozobe wrote:

Sozlet's very into the whole detective thing just now. (She's here and wants me to add: "A few days ago she was begging and begging me to play a detective game." She was the detective, I was the distraught client.)

Oh, great minds, great minds....I used to make my parents play the exact same game! Laughing

0 Replies

The best scene in bunnicula is when they are trying to pound a frozen steak (not stake) on the bunny's chest. Kids LOVE it.

0 Replies

Anyone here read books by Enid Blyton, growing up?

That's what I grew up on in India, but heard recently that a lot of her stuff is now considered un-PC. I loved her though, books like - the Faraway Tree, the Wishing Chair, the two Famous Five series, the Secret Seven series. Long list.

Definitely will have them on hand for M to read when she's older. Also, I've only come across them online on Amazon.co.uk.

0 Replies

I remember they came up as a plot point in some Indian novel -- or was it "Life of Pi"? Something about brainwashing towards how wonderful the English are, you're right.

I haven't read anything of hers yet.

So far sozlet's read all four Cam Jansen books. Big hit, tore through them (most were read in a single sitting). We've started Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, that's slower going for her (she likes it but finds it a bit preachy). (She didn't use that word, forget what she said exactly, but she noted that it was just bad kid does a bad thing, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle fixes the bad kid, over and over. She does like some of the more funny/ creative fixes though.)

0 Replies

Quote:

We've started Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, that's slower going for her (she likes it but finds it a bit preachy). (She didn't use that word, forget what she said exactly, but she noted that it was just bad kid does a bad thing, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle fixes the bad kid, over and over. She does like some of the more funny/ creative fixes though.)

The Sozlet is a perceptive reader.

0 Replies

Katie Kazoo series is popular w/my smallfry... Also there are Magic Schoolbus chapter books as well as the basic picture ones... Both are made for chomping through by a bookworm...

0 Replies

Ahem.....

Beverly Cleary anyone?

"Ramona The Pest" is still one of my all time favorite books although "Harriet The Spy" was my role model.

0 Replies

yes - Ramona!

Also, think themes, Soz. She likes series, but maybe it could be a series of biographies. Or a series of other non-fictio. Tonight at my young lit class we talked a lot about non-fiction. There's a lot of new and not horribly dry non-fiction out there.

0 Replies

Nims Island Wendy Orr,
soon to be a hollywood movie.
Named one of the Best Books for Children of 2001 by the L.A. Times.
Shortlisted, The West Australian Young Readers' Book Award (WAYRBA)

Tomorrow when the war began, John Marzden
(Soz may be a little young for this yet.) (Fictionally set in the mountains around my home).
(The series) forms a modern classic and has been a runaway success. They were written to be accessible to teenagers, but John Marsden does not talk down to his audience and adult readers will find a lot to enjoy and appreciate here as well.
Over a million copies of these books have been sold.

Aussie Bites.
The books have a bite taken out of the corner. Not sure if you will be able to get them over there.
http://www.margaretclark.com/bites.htm

Dig around and see if you can come up with a copy of The Folk of the Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. A little old fashioned now.

Buggalugs Bum Thief By Tim Winton.
"Skeeta Anderson wakes up one summer morning to find that part of him is gone, something he thought he'd never miss - his bum. He discovers that almost every single backside in the town of Bugalugs has been stolen - and 496 bums is a lot of bums to go missing without a trace. It's up to Skeeta to catch the thief. And the embarrassed peope of Bugalugs find it hard to own up...

"A wonderfully silly story for kids from one of Australia's best writers."

0 Replies

Dick King-Smith Author of "Babe The gallant Pig"

http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/dickkingsmith/books/

HOW COULD I FORGET

Emily Rodda
http://www.emilyrodda.com/booklist.html
Click the links on the above page then click the pic, then click the spine.

Teen power series currently being reprinted as The Raven Hill mysteries.
Fairy realm series...

All emily's books.

0 Replies

So many books...so little time...and she probably can't count on more than 95 more years of reading.....

0 Replies

Has she read Vikram Seth's "Beastly Tales from Here and There"?

Apart from the ones already mentioned in this thread,...some books I read when i was a kid :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Garden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Katy_Did

0 Replies

Thanks sakhi, I have that book ("Beastly Tales...") but haven't given it to her yet, good idea.

I thought about opening a new thread about this but will tack it on to this existing one:

Is Junie B. Jones Talking Trash?

Excerpt:

Quote:

AT her all-day princess-theme party for her graduation from preschool, Lyra Alvis had her face painted, went first down the water slide and was even allowed to eat the flower on the cake. "It was the best day of my life," said Lyra, 5, who lives in Nashville.

At least until bedtime. That is when her father, Lance Alvis, did something he'd never done before: Midway through a book that was a gift from a friend, he insisted she pick out something different to read.

"But I love this book," Lyra said.

The paperback in question was about Junie B. Jones, the hero of a popular Random House early reading series that has divided parents since it was introduced 15 years ago. With more than 43 million copies in print and a stage show touring the country, the series has its share of die-hard fans and is required summer reading at many elementary schools.

But more than a few parents have taken issue with Junie B., as she is called. Their disagreement is a pint-size version of the lingering education battle between advocates of phonics, who believe children should be taught proper spelling and grammar from the outset, and those who favor whole language, a literacy method that accepts misspellings and other errors as long as children are engaged in reading and writing.

I do actually know what they mean -- it bothered me at the beginning. I got over it, though. Especially, sozlet seems to recognize the errors and find them funny. I think finding and recognizing them actually makes her more confident in her abilities -- she seems to enjoy that aspect of it. (When I read a chapter aloud to her, she'll catch my eye and smile and shake her head when Junie B. makes a grammatical mistake.) It's not like the Junie B. books are all she reads -- she has plenty of other opportunities to see proper grammar modeled. That's just part of the humor of the book.

0 Replies

Funny, I never actually read those books myself. Duckie brings them home from the library, reads them, and takes them back and I never looked inside. Is the whole book a first person account by Junie B.?

We read Captain Underpants and the little cartoon excerpts always have the phonetic misspellings. But the narrated sections of the book have proper spelling.

0 Replies

Yep, they're all first-person accounts. When it's just Junie B.'s narration, the spelling is fine (unless it's something like "Sue Keeny" for zucchini), but her grammar is goofy ("runned," etc.). In First Grader ones there are sections where she "writes" and those have misspellings, though often those are crossed out and replaced with the correct spellings.

I read some to sozlet early on, and later she wanted me to read a chapter or two to her for fun when she was in the middle of reading them to herself, and then often I'm curious about what happens after the chapter I read and go back and read the rest myself. :-)

By the way she just finished a book called "Isabel of the Whales" that was by far the most mature of the books she's read so far -- listed at about 4th grade reading level but themes of death and loss and love and all of that. She really enjoyed it and seemed to really get it.

0 Replies

Forgot to say why I thought of it -- that's another one where I read the occasional chapter at bedtime, and I had to see what happened, and finished it at the pool while she was busy swimming, and absolutely bawled. I didn't expect it to be so sad!! It was rather embarrassing.

0 Replies

Junie B. Jones, Magic Treehouse, and...?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know