book ideas for 4 yr old boy?

[Karen N]

I have been really stuck for a while now on what books to get for my 4 yr old boy - we have loads of picture books which he has enjoyed but has read them all loads and isnt as interested in them as he was and we have exhausted the library.

We read 'The faraway tree' stories and The wishing chair stories by Enid blyton last year and he really liked those - he was only 3 at the time and they are chapter books with only a few black and white illustrations so i was quite impressed - he's just asked to start reading them again which we are.

I got an Enid Blyton secert seven book but he looked at the cover and wouldnt let me read it to him so i've put that away and we did read james and the giant peach a while back by Roald Dahl but it was a bit beyond him i think, some of the goings on in it, and although he listened he didnt seem too impressed!

Anyway - i cant seem to find anything at the moment and he loves me reading to him before bed. I looked at the hardy boys but think that would probably be a bit old for him too - its been years since i read them i cant remember properly what they were like.

Anyway, so, has anyone got any ideas or is this an awkward age for finding good books that they like? He likes usual boy type stuff - guns, fighting, space, dinosaurs and the like!

[Jean Dorsey]

My kids loved Charlotte's Web, The Magic Tree House series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and Harry Potter Series. Even at that age, My daughter has followed them all. They also liked the short Scooby Doo chapter books.

Have fun!

[Meredith]

What about magazines? Always something new, every issue. Mo's a big fan of Lego club magazine, too, which is free!

[Meg Walker]

Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling C. Holling. My son loved this when he was about 4.

Also, look at your library for books by Shirley Hughes. She wrote quite a few about a little boy named Alfie and his sister, Annie Rose. Hughes did the illustrations as well, and they're lots of fun. I love the cluttered house and the back yard!

- Meg

[lis]

DD loved Jonathan Swifts 'Gullivers Travels' retold for children by Martin Jenkins and Roald Dahls 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'.

[Joyce Fetteroll]

One series that deserves greater attention is Little Pear by Eleanor Frances Lattimore. It was written so long ago I feared when I first saw it that it would be full of condescension for another culture, but not so. The author grew up in China. Her father taught English at a Chinese university and, if the stories are any indication, she grew up with a great deal of respect for the people and their culture.

They're very sweet. Little Pear is very young (5) and has very big adventures. Despite the simple language, you get a feel for the culture of his time. He's very much an unschooler :-) His mother even says when his sisters and father remark that he's naughty, "He is very little; when he gets bigger he will be good, you wait and see. It doesn't mater if he is naughty now, sometimes!" They're definitely my favorite books that I read to Kathryn.

There are three books.

Little Pear
Little Pear and his Friends
Little Pear and the Rabbits

At Amazon you can peek inside the book:
http://tinyurl.com/y9h6una

[Sally Lopez]

I'm going to look into those Little Pear books for William (just turned 4).

I browse the juvenile fiction shelves at the library for short chapter books with illustrations that cover topics he likes. Most recently:

candy--he loved "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
mystery--we've nearly finished "The Tree House Mystery"
animals--we read "Owls in the Family" and "Runaway Ralph" (a mouse and his motorcycle)
Halloween--we've read some lengthier stories like "The Witch's Egg," and he really loved a rather spooky book about the history of Halloween that had poems and ghost stories in it.

He may get bored with anything that doesn't include something already on his radar. Will likes the How-To section and those big coffeetable books on history and such. Maybe your guy would like books on how guns are made or a martial arts manual with lots of photographs or something like David Macaulay's "Castle" (a cutaway book). We've had a lot of fun looking through cookbooks, especially a huge one on cookies, and we try recipes that look good if we can.

Some books I have strewn about are Brian Jacques' "Redwall," especially since Will saw a DVD of the animated series and really liked it; Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Farmer Boy" (and the rest of the series, too); Narnia; Harry Potter; R.L.Stevenson's "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped," which are surprisingly easy reads for as old as they are; E.B. White; and more I can't think of at the moment.

I second the recommendation for magazines. We've enjoyed Your Big Backyard and Nat. Geo. Kids, as well as lots of standard magazines like Audobon, Sierra, Smithsonian, Discover, Popular Science, all of which I found in stacks for free in my library's basement. We don't read everything, just bits and pieces like the photo captions and and whatever Will points out. He likes looking through Southern Living with me, since it has such gorgeous photos of food.

I do want to say, though, that all of the above is only about half of what we read. Will still loves to go back and reread our board books and Little Golden Books frequently.

Oh!! I almost forgot the most popular books in our house: we found these awesome manuals, called The Junior Instructor (we have Book 1 and Book 2, and I wish we had more!). They were written in 1916, but we have the 1953 versions. They are kind of like Boy Scout manuals, only not so narrow. They have fingerplays, crafts, songs, stories, play scripts, poems, essays on manners and health, bird identification, history, famous fine art, knots, etc. These books are so awesome! I don't know if you'd ever be able to find them, but something like that is way fun to browse through.

[Joyce Fetteroll]

Oh! Commander Toad series! And Nate the Great.

Both are those easy reader chapter books but both authors do a great job with the limited vocabulary. Commander Toad is a Captain Kirk hero kind of frog, saving the universe in his ship the Star Warts. Nate is a kid detective and the mysteries are actually good with a varied and complex cast of friends. It's amazing what she can do with the format.

[Wendy]

My boys, 3 and 5, loved _Charlie_and_the_Chocolate_Factory_ and _Charlie_and_the_Great_Glass_Elevator, as well as _Socks_ and the Ralph series by Beverly Cleary. They also like the Ricky Ricotta series by Dav Pilkey (who also wrote the Captain Underpants series).

[Sarah Dickinson]

Fantastic Mr Fox
The Magic Finger
Georges Marvellous Medicine
and if you can get it (out of print so try alibris)... The Great Piratical Rumbustification - brilliant.

Wendy said:

My boys, 3 and 5, loved _Charlie_and_the_Chocolate_Factory_ and _Charlie_and_the_Great_Glass_Elevator, as well as _Socks_ and the Ralph series by Beverly Cleary. They also like the Ricky Ricotta series by Dav Pilkey (who also wrote the Captain Underpants series).

[Sarah]

My children love the Flat Stanley books, The Boxcar Children, Bobbsey Twins Mysteries, The Magic Tree House books, Beverly Cleary Books, Stuart Little, and Nancy Drew (which wasn't as intense as some of the Hardy Boys).

[Ruth Suyamin]

My 5 yr old son and I have enjoyed reading books by Dick King-Smith....he wrote Babe Pig in the city ( we didnt really get into that one) but several other of his books were quite engaging and we both enjoyed reading them together....

Ruthie

Thanks for reminding me of Enid Blyton! its been years :)

[Charissa Vaunderbroad]

"The Complete Works of Curious George" has a version comes with cds as a read along, my son has loved his for years! I remember it cost a bit though.

If you have some good thrift stores in your area I suggest going that route because it's so much less expensive and you find all sorts of gems from when you were his age and if he doesn't like them it doesn't cost much.

When we go to the thrift store they let us go through the boxes in the back which is where the good ones usually are and then we usually talk about "who could have owned these books before?" I think the hunt is as fun as the read.