Books that make you crazy?

Do your kids have any books that they love, but just drive you crazy? The most recent one I can think of is Go, Dog, Go by P.D. Eastman. I seriously wonder if he/she was on drugs while writing that book. It is so disjointed and weird. I really like Are You My Mother? by the same author, so I was surprised that this one is so weird. And, of course, my kids suddenly LOVE Go, Dog, Go and bring it to me to read all the time. What book do you have to read all the time that you don't care for or think is odd?

 

Talulah in the kitchen. We've read it every night forever! It's a cute concept I'm just sick to death of it. :headbang:

 

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. The rhymes and the meter are not nearly as good as the original, and the boys always lose interest halfway through (which doesn't stop them from asking for it several times a day)! :gah:

 

we have a Wonder Pets book that they want to read over and over and over... They just about have it memorized. There was another book they used to want to read several times in one sitting, "Daddy I Love You" that we read so much I heard Hannah reciting the first page one day... (it rhymes so I guess it's kind of like remembering a song)

 

There was one called The Seven Silly Eaters that they loved for a while and it drove me NUTS. It's written in a very clumsy attempt at (sometimes) rhyming verse, so awful and clunky that it was painful to read aloud. Freshmen in high school can do rhyme and meter better than that. Argh. Luckily, it went back to the library. (The illustrations, OTOH, were amazing - Marla Frazee, one of our favorite illustrators.)

 

I hated that book too...until my kids learned to read. Now, they LOVE that book. It has lots of decodable words, sight words, and the words match the pictures (so they can use context clues to read). So they like to read it independently and now it all makes sense to me. Pure genius that a book can include all three ways a child learns to read.

 

Backyardigans: Time for a Snack...that's the one they want to read all the time :wacko:

For a while it was Llama, Llama Red Pajama

 

For weird books, "Love You Forever" tops the list. Creepy, almost...

I also agree that Cat in the Hat Comes Back is not one of Dr. Suess' best. Very weird. I also don't like the original Curious George. My DD loves all of that series but I do not like the original (monkey kidnaped from the jungle and brought to NYC to live at a zoo?!...not to mention a lot of the language is very dated.)

I've gone through periods with my older two where we "lose" a book behind the couch for a while b/c we get so sick of it.

 

All of the Backyardigan books are awful to read and a lot of the LONG Disney Princess stories! I can't stand the end of HOP on POP by Dr. Seuss. I love Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb and know it by heart! My older kids(ages 5 and 7) laugh at me all the time when I reading to them at night because I always start to fall asleep and slur my words and say all sorts of crazy things. I just am so tired at that time of day! There have definitely been some books over the years that have driven me crazy!

shannon

 

Not to mention, "After a good meal, and a good pipe, George was very tired."

And there's so much creepy exploitative stuff in the original George stories. Like when he gets drafted into the animal show, or into washing windows - "Yeah, we can use you!" I always expect it to be some gruesome kidnapping story. (That aside, though, I do like the George stories.)

 

Mine is Llama Llama, Red Pajama! My kids went through a phase where I had to read it nonstop for the 15 minutes between baths and bedtime. :headbang:

 

I hate all the Disney books. Really all of them. I love the Disney movies but the books are long, just awful to read and the same story in every book.

"I love you this much " yeah I just dont' like that he is a long eared "Hare" -- after they learn bunnies, rabbits do they really also need to learn about Hares just yet ??

I hate any books with "kittys, doggies, birdies"

Heather

 

I actually liked Go Dog Go, though I agree it is weird (and it always bothered me that you have to say the last page as "a dog par-TEE" or the rhyme doesn't come out right).

I get soooo sick of the Froggy books. They are actually funny and each one seems cute the first time you read it, but I very quickly got tired of doing the Froggy and Mommy voices. Also, each one is so true-to-life in terms of the ways that preschoolers are frustrating, they make me feel frustrated too!

Funny - I love the Seven Silly Eaters and thought most of the rhymes were clever. The only reason I got sick of it is that it's so LONG. We still get it out of the library every once in a while, though.

I can't stand any book made from a Disney movie (fortunately we don't have any, but they find them at the library sometimes) -- I just think they're terrible, plus the plots make no sense because they're abridged from full-length movies that the kids haven't seen.

I don't much like Dora books either, but it amuses me to be able to perfectly mimic Dora's intonation after overhearing the show so often!

 

Then you'd love this - when the kids were obsessed with the book, they'd "read" long parts of it aloud. Only with some mistakes: in the part about baby Lucy only liking pink lemonade, where it says "she had opinions of her own," the kids invariably read it as "she had a penis of her own." :lol:

 

So funny. Each night we tell them to pick a book as we sit there and pray that they don't pick the one we've long grown tired of, and of course they do! Go Dog Go is annoying, anything Dr. Suess (its too difficult after a long day) and well most of others. Lately they are attached to this "Im a little tea pot" book...so you know what I've been singing every night for the past 3 months! :headbang:

 

Any of the books with Biscuit the dog. I don't want to read all the barking noises out loud and that dog barks on every page!

 

mine don't. and go, dog, go! is also one of their faves... do you have the small (abridged) board book version? or the actual paper pages version? they are very different and the board book really doesn't make sense if you're used to the whole "story."

i totally love doc suess books and the books put out under his company, like that one... but then, i taught first grade for 17 years...

gl!
jl

 

The dumb $1 Sesame Street books from Target that my MIL keeps on buying. I HATE reading them.

 

I agree with "I love you this much" - I love the story, but for reading to the kids it is just annoying constantly talking about Nutbrown Hare. I am horrible - my kids can't read (obviously) yet and I have a few books that I change words in (every time so they still get the repetition). Goodnight Moon bothers me that they call the bunny a lady when my kids know the difference in bunny and lady so I just say bunny. I do the same in I Love You This Much, and I am the worst offender with a book we have that they always want to read about animals in the pond. My dh read it to them the other night and they looked so confused because he doesn't know that the story I read to them using the pictures is completely different than the words. They like the pictures and making the animal noises the most anyway - but, I know that it is a horrible practice that I have to stop soon! My two are stuck on the same books right now, and it drives me insane - not because the books are bad, but just because I could recite them at this point. My plan to introduce new books at bedtime to replace the ones I (and honestly them too) was tired of backfired so now we read a ridiculous number of books at bedtime. Brown Bear has been requested (demanded) every night for a month now and although I really like it, I am sooooo tired of it!