I really appreciated Courtney and Jessie's presentation's last week. Original fairy tale narratives are definitely a lot more intersting than today's toned down versions! Furthermore, I, for one, am also a parent who appreciates that children's writing has a lot of things that only parents would understand.
Lately, I've been reading Milne's "The House at Pooh Corner" to my daughters....a chapter each night. They are 4 and 6 and they actually enjoy it. I had thought they might be disinterested in the book because it has very minimal pictures, which are black and white at that.
But I found that the story itself is very interesting to them. And I think it is more valuable to read them Milne's original story rather than some of the more disnified versions we see today. I'm going to find some more "originals" to read them. On my list is E B White's "Charlotte's Web," and perhaps some Rudyard Kipling, etc, etc. Then I"ll move on to some more recent authors!
I bought a book for my daughter a year ago called "The Moon Stone." It's long and doesn't have a lot of pictures, and it took us three long evenings to read the whole thing, but she loves it. We've read it twice now. It's a science-fiction type of story. I too was surprised that at age 5 she was so interested in a book with so few pictures.
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