OK, a spin-off of Alyssa's qustion...Are there any books you just can't stand to read to your toddler? If so, why?

Little Red Riding Hood, I tried to skim over the wolf eating grandma part the last time I read it..is there not a PC version of this story?

Anything with a TV character or a Disney Princess. Ugh!

I'll probably offend some people, but I can not stand to read anything by Dr. Seuss! I just have a problem with reading my kids made up words like Zizzer Zoo :rolleyes:

Are you my Mother? Lots of the Little Golden Books. Anything "character" like Dora or Blue's Clues. Anna has a Blue's Clues book, and it's got a sentence fragment in it. It drives me crazy!

I'll probably offend some people, but I can not stand to read anything by Dr. Seuss! I just have a problem with reading my kids made up words like Zizzer Zoo :rolleyes:

:lol: I'm so offended! My son's favorite book right now is "There's a Wocket in my Pocket"!

Scooby Doo is my character of extreme dislike.

We have a Veggie Tales book that I can't stand so I tend to hide it :blush: They use words like 'cuz' and 'fer' and it pains me to read them out loud :lol:

Even though Dr. Suess can be annoying I think all those rhymes help kids with rythym (sp??) and sounding phonetics. For instance I think I read somewhere that kids with learning disabilites can't take the 's' off of 'sink' to make 'ink' and I think (sorry!) Dr. Suess helps with that type of thing.

Mason is really into Robert Munsch books right now. I can tolerate almost any book but reading the same one every night for 1 month does get boring. :lol:

I'm not a huge fan of Dr Seuss. We don't have many of his books though. I hate "reading" the alphabet or number books. The ones with 25 things on each page starting with a letter. It's so boring.

I agree Clare, but they are excellent for teaching vocabulary when the kids are younger. We had Mason to the point where we could say where's Kiwi? and he would find the Kiwi bird and then say, "But that's not our Kiwi!" Everyone loved that 'trick' because our Kiwi is a cat. :lol:

Now, I won't read them at night because they are "learning books" and we only read "story books" at night. I will make him read them to me during the day though.

I love Sandra Boynton books in general but I hate reading "Doggies" Doing all those dog sounds drives me nuts. I usually let DH read that one to her since he is better at making the dog sounds. :lol:

I don't mind Hop on Pop or Go Dog Go (I think that's by Dr. Suess under another name?) but I don't like a lot of other Suess either. It hurts my mind to read sometimes! :lol:

I don't like to let the kids have much "branded" stuff so I shy away from books with TV characters and such.

I agree Clare, but they are excellent for teaching vocabulary when the kids are younger.

Yep I agree, and I don't mind them when they are little and learning that stuff. It just bugs me still "reading" them now when Harry is 3.5yrs old and can name them with his eyes closed :rolleyes: I like your idea of banning them at bedtime though, I might try that :aok:

Yep I agree, and I don't mind them when they are little and learning that stuff. It just bugs me still "reading" them now when Harry is 3.5yrs old and can name them with his eyes closed :rolleyes: You're better than I am...I like them (esp. when I really tired) for the very reason Aidan can do all the work on his own! :blush:

I don't like to read Love You Forever, mostly because it makes me all choked up and nostalgic. I think it's a mean book. :lol:

I think that's a scary book, Nichole! What's up with a mom who breaks into her grown child's house??? :errr: Hello, my mommy is a teacher by day and a stalker by night!

I don't like to read Love You Forever, mostly because it makes me all choked up and nostalgic. I think it's a mean book. :lol:

I can't make it through this book without crying! :lol: And I agree, it's sort of a creepy book.

My niece has an obnoxious book called "Walter the Farting Dog". It is funny the first time but not the 10th....she calls it the Betty book because that is the girl's name. I guess she misses the point of the book which is the flatuence challenged dog.

I can't stand Ladybug's Birthday!! And, of course, that's the one we have to read every single night before bed! :banghead: I just can't stand it because they author uses "Ladybug" for every reference! It should be just "she" once in a while! It makes it really awkward to read.

Anne, is it the pictures that make you think it's creepy, or the words?

From Robert Munsch's website:

Love You Forever

Love You Forever started as a song.





"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
as long as I'm living
my baby you'll be."



I made that up after my wife and I had two babies born dead. The song was my song to my dead babies. For a long time I had it in my head and I couldn't even sing it because every time I tried to sing it I cried. It was very strange having a song in my head that I couldn't sing.

For a long time it was just a song but one day, while telling stories at a big theatre at the University of Guelph, it occurred to me that I might be able to make a story around the song.

Out popped Love You Forever, pretty much the way it is in the book.

My regular publisher felt that it was not really a kid's book and I ended up doing it with another publisher.

One day the publisher called up and said "This is very strange. It is selling very well in retirement communities in Arizona. It is selling in retirement communities where kids are illegal. This is supposed to be a children's book. What is going on?"

"Grownups are buying it for grownups!"

In fact, it turned out that parents buy it for grandparents and grandparents buy it for parents and kids buy it for everybody and everybody buys it for kids.

As a matter of fact, everybody buys it for everybody. That's why it sells a lot of copies. I think it's my best book. So far it has sold about 15,000,000 copies.

Everybody makes up their own song for this book. I would like to put different versions of the song up on this site, now that the site has sound on it. If you send me your version, either as a tape or an audio file or a MR3 file, I will try to put it up in the LOVE YOU page. If lots of people send me their versions, I will not be able to put them all up, but I would like to hear them even if I can't put them on the site. The way I sing it in the story is just MY version. You are supposed to make up your own.

That's so sad, Bev! :bawl:

Well, both! Like I said, the idea of a mother breaking into her grown child's house is a very wierd thing.... Sentimental idea, sure, I get that. But it's wierd! Stalker-ish, kwim?

Anne, is it the pictures that make you think it's creepy, or the words?

Count me in as another who does not like Love You Forever. I dont know what it is. I just dont like the book.

Interesting on Love you forever. I'm taking Children's Lit this summer, and one day we were in groups and each group had two books to read aloud. Then each had to decide which book was most appropriate for children and why...and Love you forever was chosen by their group as being more appropriate for children, and only one person mentioned it might be creepy. Instead everyone focused on the never ending love a parent has for a child, and the imagination behind the boy's mom still coming to him at night. No one in there thought it was meant literally! I absolutely love it, and wish there was a version with a little girl.

For me, I don't mind a lot of Dr Suess, but I hate being asked to read One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish at bedtime!! :dead: It's about 60 pages long, but thankfully Emily is young enough I can skip 40+ pages at a time and she doesn't realize it. I dread the day when she can say "No mommy! you missed a page!"

Amy - I know what ya mean. The Cat In The Hat is another long one that I try to do page skipping with :lol:

I skip pages in almost all Dr. Seuss books. :lol: They're WAY too long!

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who skips pages! :lol: Angelina the Ballerina is just WAY too long!

I can't stand Goodnight Moon and My World both by Margaret Wise Brown.. they are so weird and make no sense????

Oh... I forgot about the Baby Einstein books. The ones that have been given to us are terrible!