Read-Aloud books you've hated

[carriewillard]

I was disappointed with Little Britches. I dislike most Dr. Seuss books. (I would rather put sharp sticks in my eyes than read Cat in the Hat!)

I was unimpressed/bored with Mr Popper's Penguins. I dislike Berenstain Bears because the father is portrayed as a bumbling idiot and I avoid that stereotype with my kids. I was unimpressed with Stuart Little (but love The Trumpet of the Swan).

 

The Giving Tree I find depressed, but hubby calls me that because we both find it's symbolic of motherhood. LOL!

[beaners]

This is me. I don't know why I do it. In my 43 years as a bookworm, I've dropped less than 5 books.

Sometimes it is like a train wreck, you know you shouldn't finish, but you have to anyway.

Actually, I'll even finish a series I hate. I HAVE to know how it ends.

 

I do this too. I've even been pestering my husband to watch some awful European Firefly knockoff we bought because I've seen a couple episodes and I want to know how it ends. I get sucked in to stories so easily, even when I know I don't like them.

[Walking-Iris]

Oh man so many of the books people have listed are so...awesome!!! I love children's books. It's kind of my thing. And so many of them i would even say are necessary for cultural literacy.

 

But I'll play. Junie B Jones. My Kinder thinks they're hilarious. I can't stand them. The bad grammar in an attempt to make her seem like a cute Kindergartner is just plain stupid. She's also mean and a bit of a brat. I really dislike those books with a hot passion.

 

My little kid shave this Little Engine That Could storybook collection. There's two stories and an ABC story and a 123 story and two stories that look as though they could be board book stories. They want me to read the whole thing in one go. I want to tear my ears and eyes out. BUT...I have to admit this book has been in our family for 10 years and it's credited with teaching all my children their ABCs and how to count. I just wish I never had to read it again. Alas it's unfortunately a candidate to put into the keep for grandkids box.

 

My dh hates all Thomas Tank Engine books. And we have the original series. Hates them!

 

I refuse to read aloud anything that is character books. SpongBob, Dora, Disney etc. If my MIL gets them or my kids get them from the library I will refuse to read them. Ugh.

 

I also hate the Little Einstein boardbooks. My dd loves them but I want to gag.

[MistyMountain]

Junie B Jones. Her behavior and language are really bad. I don't want to encourage that sort of thing.

[Julie Smith]

Wonderful books, but I do not like reading aloud the Usborne Puzzle books (Puzzle Planet, Puzzle Train, etc.). Hunting for all those things on each page is not on my fun list.

 

I also did not enjoy readling the Magic School Bus books aloud to the kids, purely because there are so many threads on each page - the regular story, the reports, the dialogue, sometimes more. The books are great, the content is great, but hard to read aloud. Unfortunately my kids found out I didn't like how they jumped around, so they didn't let me read the report parts to them anymore (trying to fix the dislike), but it ended up making me just feel guilty when I'd read the books!

 

I liked the MSB Chapter books since they almost combined all the good things about the picture books but made it into a single story line so reading out loud was easy and pleasant.

[Walking-Iris]

Also my Kinder has several look and find style books. 1001 Bugs to Spot, I spy, Bug Hunt, and some other "find the tiny thing in the overwhelming detailed page" books. I'll sit down and play with him about 2 minutes and I'm done! But he wants to sit and look at those with someone all the time. Dh and I argue over who's going to look at the book with him.

[MissKNG]

#1 all time = Pinocchio! Horrible themes imo.

 

And Junie B Jones and Ready Freddy! Too much name calling and snotty behavior.

[Incognito]

 

I liked the MSB Chapter books since they almost combined all the good things about the picture books but made it into a single story line so reading out loud was easy and pleasant.

 

 

I'll have to check those out! :)

[Julie Smith]

#1 all time = Pinocchio! Horrible themes imo.

 

 

 

This was the first book that my boys ever hated.

[Black-eyed Suzan]

Stuart Little...which we just finished reading.

 

He invites a girl out for a date and when his canoe breaks he can't focus on anything but how the date is ruined and even though the girl offers other ideas for activities he basically tells her to turn around and go home...which she does. I thought it was so rude and egocentric.... especially since the couple of chapters beforehand focused on how excited he was to meet this girl.

 

Then after getting to the end of the book I wondered if there was a sequel because he starts out trying to find the bird and somehow never gets to that part. So the last chapter has him going off to find her again???

 

I didn't like the character, I didn't like the story and I didn't like the ending. I dont know if my kids liked it or not...they listened till the end of the book and didn't complain whatever that means.

 

One book I will not be re-reading to my 3yo.

 

 

:iagree: We listened to it on a trip last year and both my husband and I agreed that we would never be reading or listening to Stuart Little again.

[Jennay]

I hate the picture book Rainbow Fish. I also refuse to read the MSB picture books aloud. When a child can read, then they can read them to themselves. Before that, they can watch the MSB DVDs.

[Jennifer]

I can read Junie B. aloud, but not Magic Tree House books. I end up singing them because they are SO BORING to read aloud. I told my 6yo that they were for HIM to read to ME when the time came.

 

Amelia Bedelia has always bothered me, even as a child.

 

I paid my 10 yo $5 so I could stop reading Mysterious Benedict Society aloud to her.

 

Most of the books that mom and dad hate to read aloud mysteriously "disappear" from our house.

 

Jennifer

[twoxcell]

Chrysanthemum(horrible teasing behavior), The Runaway Bunny(just bizarre), Brer Rabbit(racism.Tricking the dumb bear who was obviously meant to be AA into getting strung up into a tree and than standing by and watching him being whipped while the rabbit chuckles to himself. :huh:) Oh Say Can You Say(Tongue torture) Love You Forever(seriously creepy). I'm sure there were others but I got rid of them quickly. :lol:

[twoxcell]

I find that interesting though because I really disliked the one with Johnny Depp. I won't even watch the whole thing and won't let my kids watch it. Way too creepy. I also think the first version was much more popular...

We love the Johnny Depp one. :leaving: I have never actually watched the entire original movie. I tried watching it several times as a kid and thought it was awful. :lol:

[Incognito]

I agree about Chrysanthemum. I don't understand why that is one of the books our library system has in the list of must-reads for Kindergarteners. I guess they want to teach kids how to make others feel like crap? Brer Rabbit - I recently bought that - I will have to read it again soon (perhaps pre-read). I loved reading the books as a child. The dialect writing was so fun to figure out. In my mind, all the characters were black. But I was a kid then, so a lot of things can be different than one thinks...

[shawthorne44]

Amusing update on the book that inspired this thread, The Lorax.

It has now been removed from my "Oh nooooo, not again" list. One of the things that drove me nuts was that for each and every instance of "Thneed" in the picture, DD said "What's that?" Some pages have that word a lot! I hate saying that word. It goes into my nose.

She hadn't asked for it for a while, until last night. Last night instead of asking "What's that?" she would point and say "Thneeds" and giggle in glee and triumph. What is not to love about your baby starting to read?

[LadyMandy]

I thought the Nana Upstairs book was a strange way to start Pre-K.

[JenniferLynn]

I wanted to like A Little Princess and we all did like Secret Garden. But we dropped ALP half-way through. Wind in the Willows was a shower gift from my best friend, and I am in my 3rd try at it. Mary Poppins also fell flat. I was surprised to not like Shel Silverstein now, which I loved as a kid.

[rellybob]

Curious George. I can't stand that naughty monkey!! Even as a child I couldn't take him. The situations he gets himself into just make me cringe.

[jenncslp]

I'm sure it's different for everyone. I despise Amelia Bedelia. She does the stupidest stuff imaginable and ruins everything, but in the end it's ok because she bakes great pies.

 

 

Amelia Bedelia cracked me up as a child, now I worry that my daughter will try to imitate her. However, (I'm a Speech Path) one of the best conference session title's I've ever seen was "Does Amelia Bedelia have Asperger's?"

[Cricket]

DD and I tried to get through "Five Children and It" this year as a read-aloud...that did not go over well. :(

 

This is funny because I started this with the girls a couple of weeks ago and we've been so busy that I completely forgot about it! Too late because last night we started Heidi.

 

I agree with Amelia Bedelia. My oldest dd would always want to get those books and I hated them! My girls both really liked Peter Pan. Ugh! I thought it was just creepy and icky!

 

We all loved Pinocchio. I'm surprised so many people don't like that one. We still laugh over the snail taking hours to come down the stairs to let Pinocchio in the house.

 

My younger ds a few years ago got to pick a book to bring home from my uncle's house. He chose For Big Bucks Only, a hunting guide from the North American Hunting Club. Now THAT is the worst read aloud EVER!

[alpidarkomama]

Mary Poppins is my all-time least favorite. What's with her obsession w/admiring herself in the mirror? And the zoo with people in cages? Ugh, ugh, ugh.

[shawthorne44]

I actually tried to throw away a book this weekend. (Truly astounding)

I had bought a milk crate filled with kids books at a garage sale. (It was a fabulous garage sale. They were moving to Hawaii, so they were selling stuff they would have normally kept) Included was a book meant for a leapfrog thing. I innocently "read" it. Oh my!, that annoying. To liven it up, I apparently made some amusing noises the first time, and now DD gets hysterical that I don't make the SAME noises, and I have no idea what noises they were.

Unfortunately, the trash was full, and I didn't jam it in there far enough, so DD rescued it and said "Don't throw away this book".

ETA: there had been some amazing books in the milk crate.I think it was her "keep for future grandkids" book collection.

[Alte Veste Academy]

One book I loathed was The Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown (sorry Margaret).

It is impossible to overstate how much I love Scuppers. Adventurous, resourceful...what's not to like?! In my best burly seaman voice, "Born at sea in the teeth of a gale, the sailor was a dog. Scuppers was his name."

 

One of my favorite kids' books ever is A Garth Williams Treasury, which includes The Sailor Dog. Even though they are growing out of picture books, the kids all know that if Mom is having a bad day, Scuppers will fix it. Seriously. This is one of the handful of books that I have to buy two more copies of so that I can hand one down to all three of my kids.

[dewdropfairy]

Someone got our family a copy of the book "Everyone Poops". My toddler loves it and wants it read to her several times daily. I hate it.

[shawthorne44]

Even as an adult I struggle with this. I can't even remember the last book I began and didn't finish, even when I could tell it was junk. And I'm super careful before starting a series, because I KNOW I'll buy the whole thing to read to the end, even if it stinks. It's like a tic :lol:-

 

My all time favorite email was from my best friend. The body of the email was empty and the subject was "I hate you".

A week before, I'd insisted she borrow my books-on-cassette of "The Gunslinger", the first of Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

[amazzie]

I also can't stand reading Amelia Bedelia. I bought a set of them at Sams thinking they'd be fun but they are not fun to read aloud. I make my older child read them and refuse to do it myself! I also agree about the Dora books...torture. The Maisie Mouse books are also painful when you have to read them over and over and over. But I think the key is repetition. Anything you end up reading daily for six months or more gets annoying!

[Rasa]

_{I dislike Marc Brown's Arthur books. I used to tolerate them in my younger days, but after reading Arthur's Birthday and Arthur's Christmas, I refuse to read any of them aloud. I love DW books by the same author, though. No Disney princesses / Barbies / other TV cartoon creatures allowed in our house either.}

[Unmeltable]

Great topic:

 

Giving Tree

Rainbow Fish

Legend of the Bluebonnet

[shawthorne44]

What is wrong with the Giving Tree? 

(I haven't read it.  Know nothing about it.  I think I saw it on a recommended reading list)

[Julie Smith]

I'm not reading it outloud.

 

But I did read out loud the first 3 books in the Oz series many times and liked them. I read #4 once and thought it odd. Youngest has been listening to the Oz books by himself. He is listening to #5 right now and I'm listening in on some of it. 

 

It's ODD! really, extermly ODD. The oddess book I think I can remember reading/listening to. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Oz

 

I don't think I could manage to read it out loud without stopping every page and saying a censored version of, "What the #@$#$#. Is Baum using opium? (My kids know about opium because of SOTW #3)

[nmoira]

I'm not reading it outloud.

 

But I did read out loud the first 3 books in the Oz series many times and liked them. I read #4 once and thought it odd. Youngest has been listening to the Oz books by himself. He is listening to #5 right now and I'm listening in on some of it. 

 

It's ODD! really, extermly ODD. The oddess book I think I can remember reading/listening to. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Oz

 

I don't think I could manage to read it out loud without stopping every page and saying a censored version of, "What the #@$#$#. Is Baum using opium? (My kids know about opium because of SOTW #3)

 

Princess Langwidere and her heads weren't odd? :D

[Julie Smith]

Princess Langwidere and her heads weren't odd? :D

 

Not compared to this book. Head throwing Scoodlers who pop of their heads and throw them. People who give other people donkey and fox heads becuase they like the. ... 

 

Princess Langwidere has nothing on this book. 

[Uff Da!]

What is wrong with the Giving Tree? 

(I haven't read it.  Know nothing about it.  I think I saw it on a recommended reading list)

 

The Giving Tree has a female tree that gives of herself, to a male, until she is nothing more than a stump.  I can never decide if I like the book or not because it depicts unconditional love and giving but it is not modeling a healthy relationship between a man and woman.  Many people are not bothered by it but I find it somewhat disturbing.

 

We did Black Ships Before Troy and dragged our way to the end.  We liked the Wanderings of Odysseus and In Search of a Homeland but I think there were too many battle scenes in Black Ships of Troy for us. 

[Charlened1974]

Brer Rabbit - I recently bought that - I will have to read it again soon (perhaps pre-read). I loved reading the books as a child. The dialect writing was so fun to figure out. In my mind, all the characters were black. But I was a kid then, so a lot of things can be different than one thinks...

Being from the south, the dialect just sounded like all the old men in my family! And as a child I never thought much about race, but I suppose I would have thought them white like all those old men. It is amazing how background changes a child's-and adult's- perception. Knowing it upsets so many now, it has never been on our reading list, and I don't guess my children have ever even heard of the books.

[PachiSusan]

It's so funny how we have such perceptions that differ. The Giving Tree, to me, is a story about unconditional love (the tree) and how some people (the boy) take advantage of that, but in the end, they both learn a lesson: giving of ourselves is what is important in the end, not what we can give or do for each other.

 

That is a lesson I very much want Melissa to learn, and we've read the book many times. I can barely get through it each time because I cry. 

[Heidi]

Burgess Bird Book, Pinocchio, and Winnie the Pooh were painful.  My ds3 is forcing me to read Thomas the Train over and over and over.  :crying:

[Kareni]

Junie B Jones. My Kinder thinks they're hilarious. I can't stand them. The bad grammar in an attempt to make her seem like a cute Kindergartner is just plain stupid. She's also mean and a bit of a brat. I really dislike those books with a hot passion.

 

 

Add me to the list of those who do not like the Junie B. Jones books.

Other definite non-favorites include The Giving Tree and, for some unknown reason, the Berenstain Bears books.

 

Regards,

Kareni

[emcap]

Stone Fox.

 

Let me spoil it for you. Highlight below.

 

D@mn dog dies. All of the sudden. No lead up

Up til that point, great book.

We listened to this in the car, at that point we were all dumbfounded. Quite a surprise

[Laura Corin]

The wheel on the school.  The language was turgid.

 

L

[Laura Corin]

Burgess Bird Book, Pinocchio, and Winnie the Pooh were painful.  My ds3 is forcing me to read Thomas the Train over and over and over.  :crying:

 

 

The AA Milne Winnie the Pooh is still one of our favourite read-alouds.  I read a chapter to the boys about once a year and we still have the Alan Bennett audio for long trips.

 

L