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Archive for July 16th, 2010

Bedtime Books: Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary

Friday, July 16th, 2010

I’ve decided to share a little about the books that we read at bedtime as we complete them. It’s been an adventure for me to find books to read to my kids at bedtime - we’ve done the Bible stories and the board books and have let them read on their own, but I’ve really been wanting my kids to hear Jon’s and my voice reading to them in the evenings as they settle into their beds.

I’ve found that the kids settle down to sleep so much quicker when they have one of us in there, and I am hopeful that the drone of our voices reading will calm them further into a readiness to drift off when we close the book for the night. It seems to help us stay on schedule too; if the kids know that dawdling through bathtime and brushing their teeth cuts into the storytime, they work a lot harder to get those things done so they can get their full 15 minutes of being read to.

The first book I read to them was called Ramona Quimby, Age 8. It was an introduction to the writings of Beverly Cleary for all five of us; I didn’t read any of her books as a child, but heard much about them (then and now).

I LOVE the way that this book is written - it is easy to read, has minimal pictures that need to be shown to everyone, and the words paint the scene so well that it is easy to imagine how things are playing out.

Ramona’s attitude about stuff is so realistic of how I could see myself as a child acting, or how I imagine my own 8 year old thinking.

The words are a wonderful mixture of levels that make it easy for my 4 year old to understand the story but still make my 6 and 8 year olds think. That is exactly what I am hoping for in the bedtime story books, and it has proven to be a challenge to find other books that act in the same way.

I will continue to post on the things we read and what I think of them; perhaps it will be helpful to another parent out there trying to find something to read to the kids at bedtime (or other times), and struggling to find something that will suit a variety of ages who are all eager to have storytime at the same time.