Anonymous wrote:Margaret Hodges's "St George and the Dragon" is fantastic - brilliant illustrations by Tricia Hyman, excellent text. It's an adaptation of a story from the Faerie Queene. She did a few more in that genre -- The Kitchen Knight: A Tale from King Arthur & Comus, but St George was the best. Big hit with the kids.

The older British Ladybird books (1960s - 1970s) can be excellent, though some of them do use a more controlled vocabulary. But at least it's the controlled vocabulary that would be familiar to a Brit of that era, which is a bit distinct from ours. Most of the ones produced during that time have gorgeous illustrations on one side, text on the other.

Definitely second St. George and the Dragon!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are doing a HUGE disservice to your child by skipping over illustrated story books. Story books are typically written at a higher level than early chapter books (I think I read somewhere that they are on average written at the 4th or 5th grade level), and the pictures are obviously interesting and meant for young children, and they add to the story. I would rethink your strategy and go back to age appropriate story books. There are thousands of them!

I think you must have missed that the person who resurrected this three year-old thread for recommendations isn’t skipping over illustrated story books. They’re reading 5-10 illustrated story books each night with her youngest child, and then, they spend ADDITIONAL time reading chapter books as a special activity for the older child.

dp. I feel like it's not clear what kind of picture books are being read. When that poster reads to the two year old, is that poster choosing story books written at a higher level than early chapter books for the benefit of the older child? Maybe, maybe not.

Dragon masters has a lot of illustrations on each page.

Margaret Hodges's "St George and the Dragon" is fantastic - brilliant illustrations by Tricia Hyman, excellent text. It's an adaptation of a story from the Faerie Queene. She did a few more in that genre -- The Kitchen Knight: A Tale from King Arthur & Comus, but St George was the best. Big hit with the kids.

The older British Ladybird books (1960s - 1970s) can be excellent, though some of them do use a more controlled vocabulary. But at least it's the controlled vocabulary that would be familiar to a Brit of that era, which is a bit distinct from ours. Most of the ones produced during that time have gorgeous illustrations on one side, text on the other.

I'd reiterate what everyone is saying about picture books. The vocabulary can be pretty complex and I wouldn't skip over them to get to chapter books.

A couple ideas:

(1) Fairy tales. These stories are really fundamental in our culture because of all the literary references. Consider Mary Hoffman's "A First Book of Fairy Tales." Of course, the Andrew Lang, Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Anderson versions are far more complex, but it's important to get a grasp on the basic story first, and your child can internalize the stories by reading them many times over.
(2) Wider folk tale/mythology literature. My daughter loved "The Seal Prince" (retold by Sheila MacGill Callahan) as well as some of the Warwick Hutton retellings of Greek myths. Again, this builds a foundation for later reading.
(3) Books about history. Don't worry about chronology right now, and instead get a feel for what it would be like to live in different time periods. Examples: Ketzel, the Cat Who Composed; Jackrabbit McCabe and the Electric Telegraph; When Jesse Came Across the Sea (this one may be a little more advanced, but my daughter's enjoyed it well enough).
(4) Books about science. Magic Schoolbus is fantastic for this, and will give your child a vocabulary and a little bit of a structure to pick up these topics in greater detail later.
(5) Poetry. Getting an intrinsic feel for rhyming will help with phonics and learning to read later. The Shel Silverstein poems are probably too advanced and the humor will fly over your child's head, but you could try A.A. Milne, or even just a good copy of Mother Goose. My daughter's preschool class memorized a short Robert Frost poem last year, and she occasionally still repeats a couple lines of it here and there.

Finally, one obscure suggestion that my daughter loves: J.R.R. Tolkien's Mr. Bliss. He wrote it for his children, and the silliness really appeals well to preschoolers. Pictures on nearly every page.

Love “mercy Watson” and “Mr putter” - the author is great