Chapter Books

Amelie has listened to 50 chapter books. I made a blog post near the beginning of when we started reading chapter books instead of only picture books, and it was in October 2014, so we started when she was probably just a little over 4. I'm hoping that James can start around the same age - maybe we'll read some over together with Amelie. 

Reading these together at bedtime is really enjoyable; the only bad thing is that if I have to miss a night and Sam does bedtime, I've missed what happens. Now I'm just waiting until she's 6 to read The Hobbit :)

1.  The Complete Beatrice Potter
2.  The Mouse and the Motorcycle (twice)
3.  Mr. Popper's Penguins (twice)
4.  The Cricket in Times Square
5.  Little House in the Big Woods (twice)
6.  Little House on Plum Creek
7.  By the Shores of Silver Lake
8.  The Long Winter (Once we got into this one, I realized it was too depressing for a 4 year old. I blame Sam, who'd read it more recently and said it would be fine!)
9.  Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle
10. Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle
11. Winnie the Pooh (I would highly recommend this one! I hadn't read it as a child and didn't realize how high quality it was. There's a lot there for the adult reader)
12. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (They performed this at the Christmas pageant at church and we read it right after)
13. Just So Stories by Ruyard Kipling
14. RT,  Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH
15. Harriet the Spy
16. Stuart Little 
17. The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich (This one was suggested by the children's librarian because she enjoyed the Little House books so much and is about an Ojibwa girl)
18. Zigzag Kids: Bears Beware (this one came from the Little Library in our neighborhood)
19. The Twits
20. Rascal
21. The Wind in the Willows (the language here is probably too dense, but I asked Amelie if she wanted to keep going and she did - I guess it's similar to the Beatrice Potter stories.)
22. The Golden Goblet
23. Judy Moody (like a modern-day Ramona)
24. Ramona the Pest (It was fun for me to read this and think about Kindergarten in the 1950’s versus Kindergarten today)
25. Peter Pan 
26. Ramona the Brave 
27. The Tale of Despereaux
28. Beezus and Ramona
29. Paddington, Here and Now (We watched the movie and it was lovely.)
30. Another Paddington book (I'm not sure which one! I guess I didn't write it down and scrolling through a list is not helping me.)  
31. The Phantom Tollbooth
32. The Classroom at the End of the Hall
33. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
34. The BFG
35. Matilda 
36. The Witches
37. Charlotte's Web
38. James and the Giant Peach (We started this movie, but it was too scary.)
39. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (I'd like to watch this movie, but we can't agree on which version. I'm enjoying the Roald Dahl immensely. We should read more.)
40. Alice in Wonderland
41. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (We saw an absolutely fantastic local theater production of this - both kids loved it and started us reading the book and watching a BBC version of it, too.) 
42. Prince Caspian 
43. The Bad Beginning (Lemony Snicket #1)
44. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 
45. Clementine (they  read this one aloud at school)
46. One Crazy Summer
47. The Reptile Room (Lemony Snicket #2)
48. The Wide Window (Lemony Snicket #3 - We watched the Lemony Snicket movie one day when Amelie and I were home sick since we thought it would be too scary for James.) 
49. A Light in the Attic (by Shel Silverstein - Amelie has gone on a poetry kick lately. She wants to dictate her compositions to me.) 
50. Where the Sidewalk Ends
51. The Miserable Mill (Lemony Snicket #4 - I think Nana Jana was somewhat horrified at how gloomy these are, but Amelie seems to like them a lot - she was hesitant with the first one but has requested the rest over other books.) 

Up next on my list are probably some additional Roald Dahl, The Wizard of Oz books (we started awhile ago, but it was too scary), some of the other Paddington or Winnie the Pooh, Amelie's requested the rest of the Narnia series, maybe more of the NIMH books, at least the first Boxcar book, and more diverse books. I'm all ears if you want to give some recommendations!