In article ,
Beth Kevles wrote:


When I read aloud to my kids, I aim for books that they're not quite
able to read independently, usually because they lack the vocabulary,
but sometimes the the kids lack historical context. Recent successful
reads have included __Tom Sawyer__ and __Alice in Wonderland__. On the
other hand, __Treasure Island__ was a loser and we gave it up after
three chapters.

Hi Beth!

With my 8- and 11yo boys, we've had excellent luck with stories from
__The Arabian Nights__ -- we have a lovely book with nice pictures and
apparently the original language, which they certainly couldn't
understand on their own. Another one that they liked a while back was
__Mary Poppins__. My boys have also read themselves some of the OZ books.
All of these have some fairly challenging language. Greek Mythology also
fits in well here. So do folk tales from other cultures (and these have the
advantage of often being short enough to read in a single session in families
where consistent reading-together time is hard to achieve).

I want to avoid SF/Fantasy, because my older son reads that to the
exclusion of other forms of literature.

It occurs to me that most of my suggestions would, I think,
technically fall under the "Fantasy" label, though they're a bit
different than the dragons and wizards fare I typically think of
under that heading.

I've thought of __A Midsummer's Night Dream__, but think my younger son
might not be ready yet, even though the elder boy would probably eat it
up.

Jim Weiss does a simplified version of that (and Taming of the Shrew)
on one of his story tapes/cds, which my now-8yo has enjoyed for some
time. I'd guess you're not far from your 7yo being able to enjoy the
original with some guidance from you as you read through it.

Good luck, and nice thread! I'll be watching for other replies, though
I admit that between homework, activities and a 3yo who needs only as
much sleep as the 8yo does, we don't read aloud to the older boys as
much as we'd like to.

--Robyn