Anyone care to recommend good bed-time story books for kids (mine are aged 9 & 6)?

I don’t necessarily mean educational stuff or as reading books for them, but as our routine is for me to read to them for 15 minutes or so to wind down before lights-out - ideally something light & entertaining (& that I’d like aswell). We’ve done most of Roald Dahl & just finished the all the David Walliams books which they enjoyed. Thanks.

Top of the list. The Gruffalo!

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Enid Blyton books / Secret Seven

The Railway Children

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Terry Pratchett has a line of childrens books as well as the brilliant Disc world series, i would start them with Truckers its the first of a trilogy and perfectly good for kids of 6 & 9 and will keep you entertained as well.

Link - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34542.Truckers

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I've just read mine Stig of the dump.

Seemed to enjoy it, as did the kids.

Truckers, diggers & wings! Excellent books. Also I suspect his inspiration for the wee free men!

Johnny and the bomb is great too.

For adult books the new dodger book is great so was the previous one although the name escapes me.

Also in gruffalo vein there is the whale and the snail.

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For the 9 year old, (and 6 year old to be honest) anything by Philip Caveney. He's fantastic to READ, which is vital eh.

Sebastian Darke series is brilliant. Non indulgent fantasy and very funny in places.

I then moved on to his Alec Devlin series, real boys own Indiana Jones style stuff.

....Up to the age of 11, when it became "book club" rather than" book time" to make him feel more grown up Then i started reading him the "Spooks" series by Joseph Delaney, about a witch slayer and his apprentice. Fantastic..Bit darker. But no darker than Dahl at his spookiest.

House on Falling Star Hill is a lovely one too, by Michael Molloy.

If you've read a bunch of Dahl, then this lot will be fine. And all really readable. I never got on with Alan Garner because his writing style is very tricky to read out loud.

I've lost him to xbox now mostly...but he sometimes lets me read him stuff, to indulge his old dad.

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for the 6 year old - burglar bill and cops and robbers, those two are cracking books.

I'm on the hunt for a copy of "Napper Goes For Goal"...

... for the boy, obviously!

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Island (or something like that) ? Yes was very good , showed just how good he is at different styles of writing !

The wee free men the whole witch off shoot series is actually very good, think ''she will wear midnight'' was the last ? Good way to teach your kids about swearing without any bad words lol

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Anything but Enid Blyton! She almost put me off reading at that age - thankfully Roald Dahl came to the rescue just in time.

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Mine are 4 and 5 and we've done The BFG and The Witches although they didn't like my sinister Grand High Witch voice - most Roald Dahl books have chapters that only take 5 minutes or so. The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe is also a decent one.

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Thanks for the response – will definitely check out some of those.

As for Roald Dahl, Hairy, my favourite (just ahead of the BFG) is probably the relatively unknown (well I’d never heard of it) ‘Danny champion of the World’ – a quite touching story of a boy’s relationship with his father who’s a compulsive poacher. I didn’t particularly like Charlie & the chocolate factory TBH although it’s probably heresy to say so even if the kids did. The David Walliams books are good – ‘Billionaire boy’ and ‘Mr Stink’ being the best ones although the kids enjoyed ‘Boy in a dress’ most which is about a boy who finds he enjoys dressing up in girls dresses & wearing make-up – must admit I wasn’t sure it was errr, ‘appropriate’, but clearly that’s my hang up not theirs (I've got a boy and a girl), as they didn’t bat an eye and completely got it.

Mine love The Twits and Fantastic Mr Fox (the film is brilliant). They love all the Dahl books and the Dr Seuss books too. I utterly hate modern children books as most of them are just wannabe books looking for film adaptations - Harry Potter can stick his wand up his anus as far as I'm concerned.

In relation to your hang-ups, my kids don't bat an eyelid when they see me in my bra and wig - we're liberal people. You should try it.

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Anything from Michael Murpurgo.

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