The 19 Best Read Aloud Books For All Ages
Our favorite all-ages bedtime scripts.
by Rachel Shukert
October 2, 2008
10. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Yet another example of how friends in real life are never quite as fun as the friends in books. April, a kind of sixth grade precursor to Patsy Stone, with her platinum beehive and droopy false eyelashes, is new in town and an obvious outsider, but soon hooks up with Melanie, the daughter of university professors. With the help of various boards and strange items purchased from a junk store run by a shadowy figure known only as the Professor, they build a make-believe version of ancient Egypt, complete with historically accurate rituals and rites, in an empty lot. Of course, play is curtailed somewhat when a serial killer hits the town. Yes, a serial killer (it was the sixties, after all).
11. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
Yeah, I could easily have put all seven books on this list, but that felt like cheating, and is there anyone who hasn’t yet read Harry Potter? However, if it’s a matter of the best one to read out loud, I’d like to make a case for Number of 5 (or OotP, as we Muggles in the fan community call it). After the trials of the Goblet of Fire, Harry is older, wiser, sadder, and ready for action; and OotP delivers it in the form of the Order of the Phoenix, a secret society formed to battle the ultimate evil of Voldemort and bears more than a passing resemblance to the mythical French Resistance (if not the actual French Resistance.) Also, it is extraordinarily long, and can easily last you through a month of bedtime stories.
12. Mischievous Meg by Astrid Lindgren
As much as I want to put my beloved Pippi Longstocking on this list, I think Pippi’s subversive, parentless charms are best enjoyed in solitude — her self-sufficient adventuring loses some of its exhilarating mayhem when delivered in the calm voice of a parent. But for more familial reading, there is Mischievous Meg, another Lindgren creation, a rough and tumble girl who lives in a Swedish farmhouse. She’s Pippi with parents, and no less delightful for it, blaming her misdeeds on a fictional classmate named Richard, setting her sister adrift on the river, and cheerfully sustaining a concussion when she falls off the roof. Lindgren lets girls be naughty, too — how refreshing.
13. The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss
For all parents, the time comes when their children start asking difficult questions: “Why is the sky blue?” “Where do babies come from?” “Explain to me the causes of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?” Well, I can’t help you with those first two, but when the third comes up, read them The Butter Battle Book, Dr. Seuss’ anti-war classic, in which two groups of essentially similar people become bent on each others total destruction over who eats their bread butter side up, and who eats it butter side down. And with that, Dr. Seuss somehow manages to elucidate the utter futility of armed warfare with an eloquence that an army of op-ed columnists could never hope to achieve.
14. The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
Similarly, when your child starts asking difficult questions about glacial melt, deforestation and global warming, it’s time for the Lorax. Yes, it’s the corporations who want to kill you. And also want to kill the brave, benighted Lorax, who reminds me more and more of Al Gore with each passing day – pre-Nobel Al Gore, anyway.
©2008 Babble
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