Age and Children's Stories

The obvious is sometimes worth stating. There are excellent children's stories for children of all ages. They have been divided into the age groups because of how different a 3 year old is from an 8 year old. In this article I will shameless plug a few children's stories from personal experience. Either I loved them as a child or else I tried them on my child or on someone else's children and they liked it.

Beginner

I confess that I am amongst the hordes of people who loved Dr. Seuss from as early as I can remember. I don't have clear memories of when I first heard one of his stories or saw the pictures but some reason I have a deep emotion about believing that One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish is a great work of art and literature for people under 5 years old. I believe that depth is because I loved it as such a young child the first time. I also read it to young children after I grew up. Like so much art, some love it but it does not suit everyone.

Speaking for myself, I liked how in my kindergarten someone brought in inflated letters of the alphabet and paraded them around the class - they showed up as guests hoping to make learning to read more fun and I felt it actually worked. There are ABS books, Sesame Street, Big Bird and Barney all did ABC story books for those of you dealing with pre-school children, and yes you know your kids are young when you think it may be a couple of years before they will be able to understand the books mentioned above 'the right way'.

TV & Movies

At this point I would advocate: Sesame Street, reruns of Mr.Rogers, Thomas the Tank Engine, Tots and Barney for children under 5. They generally seem to be enough but not too much. At the older end of this, there is Winnie the Pooh when Christopher Robin was 6 years old.

Winnie the Pooh stories are great for the time when your toddler crosses over into being an elementary school aged child, from a toddler into 'a child'. For nonparents, such people seem to be little kids but to all the SAHMs these are the people the Moms started calling 'big kids' because they can eat their own sandwich, use the toilet, help dress themselves, and are learning to brush their teeth. Such people can use cups rather than bottles. They may spend some time in the bathtub alone as long as the door is open.

Intermediate - School Aged

Winnie the Pooh is great for reading aloud to your child or for readers to read aloud to their parents or to younger siblings in the home. For the sake of being realistic and going from experience: I love Pooh and always have but my son has never been interested in Pooh. My son loved Thomas the Tank Engine and when older, Pokemon.

In other articles I will go into this in more detail and into more aspects of this, but at present let me just say that Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys Mysteries are awesome. My son had no interest in those but loved Captain Underpants. You and your child or children may not all have the same taste in literature. That is okay. If you spend enough time shopping around online or at the bookstore or can get your children to the library, then there is some chance of making everybody happy.