The 19 Best Read Aloud Books For All Ages
Our favorite all-ages bedtime scripts.
by Rachel Shukert
October 2, 2008
5. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
Kids who read will never complain about going to a museum again, as Claudia and Jamie Kincaid run away from home, go to New York City, and move into the Metropolitan Museum of Art to live off the change from the fountain and become embroiled in an international art mystery involving an enigmatic angel sculpture and an even more enigmatic elderly millionaire. With references to Michelangelo, Katharine of Aragon, the United Nations, and Sotheby’s, this is probably the most urbane children’s book ever written. And after reading, you can check out the film version, which features Ingrid Bergman in one of her last movie roles, and Madeline Kahn as “Schoolteacher!” What more can you ask for?
6. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
Another surprisingly taut thriller, in which the residents of a ritzy Chicago apartment building find out they haven’t rented there by accident — they are the heirs of an extremely rich (and none-too-lamented) man named Sam Westing, who believes one of them was responsible for his death, and has devised a complicated game from beyond the grave to bring the killer to justice, and award the one who cracks the code with the big prize. The residents themselves are a perfect focus group of 70’s multiculturalism, but the book is oddly, startlingly honest about the tensions and internal conflict this diversity engenders—the social climbing WASP hostess is embarrassed by her husband’s Jewishness; the African-American female judge has complicated feelings about the racist white man who financed her education; the submissive Chinese wife has hidden reservoirs of resourcefulness and rage. Incredibly absorbing with a satisfying conclusion that is just simple enough for children to appreciate, without feeling cheated.
7. The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
There’s no better way to tell your kid you love them than by reading them The Runaway Bunny. For real. "…'If you are a gardener and find me,' said the little bunny, 'I will be a bird and fly away from you.' 'If you become a bird and fly away from me,' said his mother, 'I will be a tree that you come home to.'…and…I’m crying. Forget about it.
8. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Everything I just said about The Runaway Bunny is the same for Goodnight Moon. The sense of well-being and love from these books is palpable–they’re like the literary equivalent of breast-feeding. I’m sure you already have them both, but just a reminder, read them to your kid! Okay?
9. Matilda by Roald Dahl
The most famous lover of books in children’s literature, wee telekinetic genius Matilda is also one of its most beloved characters. And Roald Dahl’s signature nastiness is bracing and hilarious as usual – inflected with enough mordant wit and misanthropy to buttress your child’s brain against all the sentimental sludge they pick up elsewhere. I could read the opening chapter over and over – in which, apropos of little, the author muses on the scathing end of term reports he would write for a variety of monstrous children were he a schoolteacher. It’s the kind of epic malice only an Englishman of a certain age can really get right…and make so incredibly endearing.
©2008 Babble
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