Books you have found challenging to read aloud

[HS Mom in NC]

Hickleberry Finn by Mark Twain

 

The hardest part is the different accents and dialects are written as spoken and it can be very hard to read aloud.  We have a recording of it that's well done.

[ChrissySC]

As a matter of fact, what came to mind first, Peter Pan ... it was not that easy and bored the kids silly.   Funny how we all seem to agree on that one.  I think it is the way that it is written.  There is little in the way of dialogue and it reminds me of a commentary.

 

 

Oh, I have said this a dozen times!  Tale of Two Cities ... just ewwwwwwwww.  :ack2:

[Chrysalis Academy]

Swallow and Amazons.  Absolutely could not stick with it!

 

 

 

This is the one I was going to say.  We did finish it, and the kids really liked it, but I didn't find it fun to read.  If I were more up on my nautical terminology I might have enjoyed it more.

 

I've also had a hard time when we spend too long on the same genre.  We read A Series of Unfortunate Events, then a bunch of E Nesbit and the a bunch of Edward Eager.  They were all fine on their own, but after awhile I got so tired of a group of kids having kind of absurb semi-magical adventures ...

[Chelli]

As a born and raised Southerner, I have no problem reading Brer Rabbit, Twain, Strawberry Girl or any other Southern dialect written story. In fact, my dh sat with us when I read Brer Rabbit aloud to the kids and kept commenting about how good I was at the voices. He calls it "turning on my hillbilly!" LOL!

 

We are reading The Hobbit right now and I really don't think my kids would be as in to it if we hadn't watched the first two movies before I started reading it. The movies got them hooked so the book is holding their attention. They are really enjoying finding all of the differences between the book and the movies.

 

The only book that has ever stumped me with read alouds is Winnie the Pooh. I kept trying to do the voices like the chracters in the Disney version and just couldn't pull it off. My kids liked it though so maybe I was better than I thought.

[Rosie_0801]

Tarka the Otter, great book but exhausting to read aloud. Possibly because I didn't know what most of the flora described actually looked like?

I find Winnie the Pooh a bit choppy for reading aloud, and I tell you, Pollyanna can't be read in an Australian accent. You people would have choked on your sweet tea listening to me trying to fake a suitable accent.

[Aspasia]

When I saw this thread title, I immediately thought of Winnie the Pooh. Ugh. It's all the asides. I can't stand it. I also hate Just So Stories. I don't know what it is, but I only made it through a few stories.

 

Fox in Socks. Sooo difficult, I'm constantly tripping over words. That Dr. Suess...

Really? We love reading Fox in Socks! It's hilarious! It took several runs through it, but now dh and I are expert Fox in Socks readers and the kids love it. It makes its way into our day-to-day language--it has kinda become a part of our family culture. :)

[shawthorne44]

I appreciate the heads-up on Pooh.  It was waiting for me in the Holds area of the library.  I've set it aside until the audio version is available.  

[IfIOnly]

Mountain Born, Ginger Pye, The Wheel on the School, The Family Under the Bridge, & The Twenty-one Balloons.

 

I have a whole list ;)

 

TFUTH is one of our all time favorite read alouds!  :P

[momacacia]

Five Little Peppers. What a mess! Thankfully DH took it up and read it to them.

[idnib]

Don't get me started on Uncle Remus.  :banghead:

[Mnemosyne]

When I saw this thread title, I immediately thought of Winnie the Pooh. Ugh. It's all the asides. I can't stand it. I also hate Just So Stories. I don't know what it is, but I only made it through a few stories.

 

 

Really? We love reading Fox in Socks! It's hilarious! It took several runs through it, but now dh and I are expert Fox in Socks readers and the kids love it. It makes its way into our day-to-day language--it has kinda become a part of our family culture. :)

 

Well, English is not my first language, so that might account for it. If I read it slowly enough, it's okay, but I still really have to concentrate.

[Sherry in OH]

I gave up on Tom Sawyer after two chapters.   I don’t even want to attempt the Hobbit.   

 

My children listen to Winnie the Pooh, Wind in the Willows, and Paddington on CD.   I’m trying to decide whether to buy just The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe or splurge on the complete collection for our summer travels.    

 

 

[Aurelia]

The Jungle Book and Just So Stories (apparently I can't read Kipling aloud. Maybe I shouldn't attempt Captains Courageous like I was planning...). Something about them just bored me to death. I like reading his poetry aloud, though, and Librivox had a lovely recording of JSS, which even I enjoyed, and I don't like to be read to. I know there have been others that have tripped me up, at least initially, until I got into the rhythm of the book, but I can't remember them now. I played it safe and got audios for The Wind in the Willows and Peter Pan without even attempting to read them aloud. ;)  Emotionally, The Little Prince has been the hardest. I hate crying when I am trying to read. For that reason, DD is reading Bridge to Terabithia herself. I cry EVERY TIME when I read either of those, no matter how old I am.

 

I guess I'm one of the few that actually enjoyed reading Pooh aloud. I thought doing the voices was fun. 

[Mrs Twain]

I gave up on Tom Sawyer after two chapters. I don’t even want to attempt the Hobbit.

 

My children listen to Winnie the Pooh, Wind in the Willows, and Paddington on CD. I’m trying to decide whether to buy just The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe or splurge on the complete collection for our summer travels.

Get the whole Narnia set. It is a small price to pay for a peaceful roadtrip. The radio theatre recording versik is awesome. It used to be $25, but it looks like the price went up.

[madteaparty]

Wind in the Willows. We stopped.

[Mom2OandE]

Strawberry Girl.

 

We've started it twice and never get passed chapter three. I think it's going to end up in our sell pile.

[Momofeat]

Where the Red Fern Grows. It was fine until close to the end. Then I lost it. I will never, ever read that one or make my dc read it again.

[Papillon Mom]

So many mentioned here have been our biggest hits:

Loved:

Mary Poppins

Wind I the Willows

Secret Garden

 

Love the stories but really have a hard time with-

Uncle Remus- great audio book to the rescue!

 

I know it's sacrilege and I've never admitted this to anyone but... Winnie the Pooh is boring!!!! Aaarrrrgggg, I've said it.

 

Can't think of any other mom read aloud fails but I love to read aloud. When dd was younger it was nothing for me to read 2+ hours a day. I miss it.

[twoxcell]

I read Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan to my Dd this year and we both loved them. The kids have listened to them on CD as well. Many of the ones listed here were big hits for us, but British children's books tend to be my favorites. The only books I can think of that I started reading and didn't finish were Ginger Pye(so boring), Wind In the Willows, and Brer Rabbit.

[Rosie_0801]

The Jungle Book and Just So Stories (apparently I can't read Kipling aloud. 

 

Oh, the Librivox guy did a wonderful job of the Just So Stories! I was expecting it to bore me, but I developed a fan girl crush instead!

[Deee]

I LOVE A.A. Milne. I can't read 'Us two' without tearing up. I remember working with a lovely teenage boy who told me that one of the tragedies of the modern age was that the only Pooh most kids knew was the Disney version.

 

I just couldn't read Huckleberry Finn aloud! That accent is impossible.

D

[anne1456]

Last of the Mohicans - I just gave up and got the audio book, it is so wordy with convoluted sentence structure.

[DarlaS]

The Secret Garden was so hard to read out loud. I don't do accents, and the voice of the character of Dicken is so important! But we got through it and it was one of my daughter's favorites, as I'd hoped it would be.

 

That was the first book I thought of when I saw the title of this thread! lol!

[Dmmetler]

Little House on the Prairie. Somehow, I tend to doze off about the third page in a row describing wheat....

 

 

[emmaluv+2more]

We've had several that I couldn't wait to finish, but only 2 that we completely gave up on: a The Door in the Wall and Jungle Book. I'm sure the kids would love both if they had a mom capable of reading them.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Oh, right, I was forgetting the obvious - I can't read aloud anything where bad stuff happens to animals.  I cry.  I can't help it, I'm not an unusually sensitive person in other respects, but I just can't handle reading about animals suffering or being mistreated.  So there are a long list of "classics" that I'll never read aloud to my children . . . Black Beauty, Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Yearling, Call of the Wild . . . . that whole genre they will have to deal with on their own, because I'm not assigning them either.  I read wayyyyyy too many sad horse and dog books when I was young.

[zarabellesmom]

Swallow and Amazons. Absolutely could not stick with it!

 

Mary Poppins

 

Those are the only two books in 7 years of reading aloud that I just could not do!

I found Mary Poppins hard. I can't tell you how many times I fell asleep.

[ChrisB]

I gave up on Tom Sawyer after two chapters.   I don’t even want to attempt the Hobbit.   

 

I didn't find the Hobbit that hard to read.  There were some harder moments, but, overall, enjoyable.  So, you might do just fine--there's hope for ya yet...lol!

[Chris in VA]

Agreeing with Sadie--The Westing Game was AWFUL as a read aloud. Dd didn't understand it, either--there are places it becomes important to SEE the text so it is not a good read aloud if your kid is not peering over your shoulder!

 

Railway Children had a lot of description.

 

My dad read me Pooh, so it was an easy read aloud for me (he's British) when the time came to share it.

 

I don't do any voices when I RA. I change the speed or rhythm of my voice instead, to denote a change in character. So reading dialect is easy for me, I guess--Secret Garden was fun! I just read The Help and will give it to dd to read (we don't RA anymore); she's got dialect reading (any dialect) down pat--seems instinctive to her.

[sagira]

Just So Stories. Gave it to dh, who didn't mind at all. On the other hand, dh had a hard time (and didn't like) reading Little Britches out loud.

[pooh bear]

I could not read The Ascent of Rum Doodle out loud. I was laughing so much some times I couldn't get through a sentence. Just handed the book to ds and he read it to himself, with many a laugh.

 

 

[mommymilkies]

The Septimus Heap books-soooooo many run on sentences and sentences that were so long that I was gasping for breath.

 

Alice in Wonderland.  I'll admit that I hate that book now-partly because I hate reading it aloud.  I've told dh "never again".  If he wants the kids to hear it, he can read it.

 

And the usual racist tripe I've found on Ambleside lists-I'll admit I haven't reread a few times and got to a part where I stumbled over what I needed to read.  <<Insert me ranting to my children about different times, racism, etc.>>That gets really annoying.

 

And as much as I love the Hobbit, that book takes me like an entire year to read aloud for some reason.

[HelenNotOfTroy]

I found Strawberry Girl hard to read and I wouldn't even attempt Uncle Remus, but the only thing that we agreed to give up on was The Red Pyramid.

 

Winnie the Pooh was challenging the first time, but I have read it so many times now that it isn't a problem.

[kristinannie]

I couldn't do the Winnie the Pooh stories either.  We made it about 2/3 of the way through.  I bought it on audible.  Peter Pan was an epic fail for our family.  The kids just really weren't into it even after about 80 pages so we just put it away.  There are so many great books.  The kids can read some later on their own or listen to them in audio format.  I try not to beat myself up about it!

[IsabelC]

Any books that have many characters and lots of dialog give me trouble. I like to do different voices for the people, and when there are too many, I forget which voice goes with whom, or else just run out of ideas for voices, lol. Had to stop the Anne books aloud for that reason. 

 

I am the same, plus I am really crap at doing accents. When I run out of different voices everybody else ends up sounding like "talk like a pirate day"!

 

 

 

I didn't have trouble reading it exactly, but I found The Hobbit to be SO BORING.  I thought I'd like it.  I thought the kids would like it.  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

Yep, mindnumbingly boring for me too. I slogged through about half of it, thinking that I should persevere since ds liked it. Then one day he asked me "Do we really have to finish this? I don't want to hear any more, it's boring...". Ah, the blessed relief!

 

 

 

Swallow and Amazons.  Absolutely could not stick with it!

 

Mary Poppins

 

Those are the only two books in 7 years of reading aloud that I just could not do!

 

I got Mary Poppins out of the library, intending to read it with the kids, but when I pre-read it, I found the character of Mary Poppins horribly creepy, so I took it back unread.

 

 

 

Little House in the Big Woods and the rest I was able to get through, but I was crying by the end of practically every chapter.  LOL.  My son was like :confused1: .  How to explain to a 6 year old how emotionally wrenching it is when Mr. Edwards fords the flooded river to bring the girls a Christmas present?  lol. 

 

I have the problem of getting emotional about things too. I read A Long Walk to Water to the kids recently: some of it is quite confronting, and the kids just couldn't work out why I kept stopping and breathing deeply before I could continue. 

 

 

 

 

I found some of Enid Blyton's books exceptionally slow - if my DD had not been begging me to get on with it, I would have stopped.

 

 

Enid Blyton is a great favorite around here. The main problem for adults reading out loud is that she only has about 5 plots in her hundreds of books, so they get very predictable and boring. Luckily, I have somehow learned to read Blyton while letting my mind wander elsewhere.

 

[marisolstice]

Thornton Burgess Bird Book and Uncle Wiggley (so boring)

Just So Stories (the first few were tough until I figured they are NOT serious stories; the rest were fun)

Lamb's Shakespeare (paragraph length sentences and unfamiliarity with the plot)

 

I love reading Pooh, though the kids totally don't get why I snicker my way through :)

And I love reading Dr. Seuss as fast as possible.

 

I wouldn't even attempt doing something like Captains Courageous or Huck Finn as a RA...or Magic Treehouse....many books are meant to be read, not listened to, IMO.

[HRAAB]

Tom Sawyer and The Yearling.  Just cannot do them aloud.  Also books with choppy sentences.  I'm thinking like the Boxcar Children.  Books with tons of dialogue where you're always reading he said, she said, and on and on.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Ack!! Wild Season is killing me. (It's a nonfiction, beautifully written, about life around a lake in the month of May.  So far we've followed a series of animals . . .  that have each gotten killed and eaten by another animal.)  How is it that my 2nd grader is so much tougher than I am???  I've tried to quit reading it several times, but she keeps making me go on.  She was fine with the bullfrog getting eaten by the bass, the bass getting eaten by the humans, even the bunnies getting killed and eaten by the dog and snake.  I think I'm going to have to draw the line at the humans running over the snake and shooting the owl, though.  Nature red in tooth & claw, indeed. . . 

[SwallowTail]

Treasure Island.  The dialects coupled with the nautical terms made it really difficullt.  It was equally difficult for dd to follow, because I had to keep stopping and defining terms or explaining.  We eventually gave up on that one, but will return to it one day.  Oh - we had to abandon The Sword in the Stone for similar reasons, whcih was a huge surprise to me, as I love that book.

[SwallowTail]

Tom Sawyer and The Yearling.  Just cannot do them aloud.  Also books with choppy sentences.  I'm thinking like the Boxcar Children.  Books with tons of dialogue where you're always reading he said, she said, and on and on.

 

I am notorious for editing thingslike this on the fly.  I omit "he said/she said", or change them to "so-and-so inquired, such and such responded..., just to keep myself from going insane.

[Mimm]

The Secret Garden. I read everything in an American accent of course but her learning to speak Yorkshire was brought up a lot and I have no idea... :)

[freerange]

Father Brown is the only thing that both DH & I have had problems reading aloud. I dislike reading aloud Tolkien, he hates Terry Pratchett.

[Tsutsie]

So glad I'm not the only one who will not be reading The Wind in the Willows to my children. I tried a few times, but could not get into it - neither could my kids.

[pehp]

I ADORE Winnie the Pooh read-alouds. I am trying to perfect my Voice for Every Character and it is oh-so-fun to do!!!!!

 

However, I absolutely refuse to ever try to read Just So Stories again.  Jim Weiss does it for me now, and God bless him for it. Trying to read those was absolute misery to me!!!

[mamakelly]

The Golden Goblet. All the Egyptian names killed me. Audible.com to the rescue!

[Pegs]

Being Australian, I find dialogue in older US stories pretty challenging! The British novels I have no problem with, though.

[lorisuewho]

The Golden Goblet. All the Egyptian names killed me. Audible.com to the rescue!

Plus I thought the first 50% of that book was killer boring. I regret reading it.

[shawthorne44]

I don't do Peter Pan.

 

I don't either, and I recently tried.  The story is fine.  But Peter Pan is such a selfish twit.  My DH said that he wished he could have been Peter Pan, and since I think he is a twit I get a little annoyed at DH while reading the book.  

[AmandaVT]

Charlotte's Web, but only because I start crying on the very first page and can't stop myself.  :crying: :crying: :crying:

 

I think DS is going to have to read that one to DD...

 

I was coming to post Charlotte's Web for the same reason!  :crying: 

 

I had no problem with Pooh thankfully because it's one of DS's favorites. I don't do different voices though (sssh..don't tell DS that's an option!). And DS likes to read/sing Pooh's made up songs, which makes it a little easier on me!