The best children's books to read aloud this Christmas

Get a head start on all the TV book adaptations by reading the stories aloud first - and have some magical screen-free time as a family

 A quick look at the schedules will confirm that much of the screen time over Christmas and the New Year is filled with film versions of great books. One course of action could be to pre-empt the TV versions by reading the stories aloud. That way, your children would know the original version of a story books for children and would also know that behind many films or TV dramas there is a great book – and the original may be better! The choice is big; here’s a selection of the very best books – whatever the film adaptation that are coming up may be like.

The joy of children's Christmas books – in pictures

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For the youngest children Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s Stick Man is a touching and witty picture book about a loving Stick dad who get separated from his Stick children and has to do everything in his power to get back home to the “family tree”.

 

The glorious illustrations in Chris Van Allsburg wordless picture book, The Polar Express, tell of a magical journey to the North Pole for a little boy who is sceptical about Father Christmas. What will he believe after that?

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For children with longer powers of listening, Roald Dahl’s classic Fantastic Mr Fox, the story of how a cunning fox outwits the nasty farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean and so manages to feed his family and all the other burrowing creatures is hugely dramatic and perfectly paced. It will keep your listening audience absolutely gripped.

The Christmas story retold: Refuge – in pictures

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EB White is best known for the classic Charlotte’s Web but Stuart Little is an equally attractive story which explores many of the same themes. The Little family’s second child is a tiny mouse who only grows to be two inches tall. He can speak human and soon finds himself having all sorts of dramatic adventures through which he explores the importance of courage and loyalty.

 

For some rambunctious fantasy Mary Norton’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks would be ideal. Three children are given a magical bedknob by the witch who lives next door. It has the power to take them anywhere they want to go – including back in time. Rich in imagination is makes the impossible seem remarkably achievable.

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 For something more up to date you could read David Walliams’s The Boy in the Dress in which 12-year-old Dennis begins to wear a dress partly because he misses his mother and partly just because it feels nice. David Walliams is funny, touching and thought provoking; his story will certainly capture your children’s attention in print just as well as it will on TV.

How to draw… a Christmas robin

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 For older children, classics such as Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, the story of the healing powers of friendship and nature, or E Nesbit’s Five Children and It, in which a family find a sand fairy who can grant magic wishes, are brilliant for reading aloud and the long descriptive passages – especially in The Secret Garden – evoke landscape for listeners and take them into a childhood from long ago. There might even be time to read Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and so allow your children to imagine their own Scrooge before Jim Carrey’s interpretation becomes the image of Christmas!

 

If you have great recommendations on this theme let us know on Twitter Twitter @GdnChildrensBks or by emailing childrens.books@theguardian.com and we’ll add your ideas to this blog. You can use the same email address to ASK the Book Doctor a books related question

 

[Soruce:: http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/dec/21/the-best-childrens-books-to-read-aloud-this-christmas]