markus_zhang 3 hours ago

Thanks for asking. I have a 4 years old and it's difficult to pick books that he reads. It's either too many pictures that he simply gets without reading, or too few pictures that he loses interest quickly. He is also obsessed with mini destruction (e.g. in the story someone breaks something).

Now that we live in Quebec without knowing much French, which adds another layer of complexity: should I read French books with my half ass French, or just give up and go for English ones?

bwb 8 hours ago

I made a tool for this; every book in our system was recommended by a parent/author, and I've tried to zero in on the different ages. Here are the results for age 5: https://shepherd.com/bookshelf/kids?ages=29&order=newest_boo...

(You can sort and zero in a ton of different ways).

Personally, my son loved the Box Car Children (audiobook), Room on the Broom and Anything by Julia Donaldson, Where the Sidewalk Ends, the Dory Fantasmagory series (so funny), and a lot of others. Hope that helps!

  • beardyw 4 hours ago

    > Anything by Julia Donaldson +1

theodpHN 10 hours ago

Back in the day (1993!), my 3-year-old loved the delightful Living Books collection software. The interactive CD-ROMs came bundled with paperback versions of the simple books they animated, which were written by popular children's authors. A nice touch that got children interested in reading the physical books by themselves, eventually opening up the whole world of reading to them. Maybe someone's aware of whether there are apps that are today's equivalents. If you're interested, video playthroughs of the software titles are collected at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCAF301BEC1CA0D5D

Btw, if you haven't seen it, check out the book Teach Your Baby to Read. The first chapter in the free sample at Amazon gives a reason for why more children don't read at an early age ("We make the print too small"). Which helps explain why some children manage to learn to read words from commercials and TV shows (like Sesame Street!) - which often display words in big type as they are read by an announcer's clear voice - on their own long before they hit school. https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Baby-Gentle-Revolution/dp/...

Have fun!