Monday, September 13, 2010

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Family Read-Alouds

My top ten this week is all about reading aloud. Reading together is one of our favorite homeschool activities.  Here are my family's favorite read-alouds; either individual books or series.

1.  Without a doubt, Swallows and Amazons, and the books following; 12 in all.  I could have a top ten just from Arthur Ransome!  Everyone should read these books. They are so worth your family's time.  You will all love reading the adventures of children sailing, camping, and having adventures in England's Lake District.   You can look here for some background on the stories.  Excellent, wonderful books.

Now that I've taken care of the best, these following are in no particular order.

2.  The Children of Green Knowe.  A mostly-sweet series by Lucy Boston.  Starts off as not-quite-fantasy, but does get a little stranger and a little darker as the series continues.  I wrote a little bit about it here.

4.  The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (The Wolves Chronicles).  This is a long series by  Joan Aiken.  We have not quite finished; I think we have two more books to go.  I can't say we've loved every book in this series, just most of them, but we've liked them all. 

5. The Star of Kazanby Eva Ibbotson. One of the best all-around stories ever. Exciting, beautifully written.

6. Journey to the River Seaalso by Eva Ibbotson.  An exciting orphan story. But more than an orphan story.  I wrote a review of it when we read it in 2008.  Now I'm ready to read this again. 

7.  The Misadventures of Maude Marchand Maude March on the Run! by Audrey Coloumbis. Fantastic stories of two orphaned girls in search of their uncle in the old west.  We listened to the audio book narrated by Lee Adams; perfection. 

8. A House Called Awful End: Book One in the Eddie Dickens Trilogy and following by Philip Ardagh.  Hilarious, absurd story set in Victorian England.  The audio narrated by Martin Rayner is fabulous. We've listened to this on more than one road trip.  Pure fun.

9. The Phantom Tollboothby Norton Juster.  I have loved this book since I was a kid. My kids love it now too.

10.  The Voyager's Stoneby Robert Kraske and Brian Floca. The story of a bottle tossed into the sea. I described how we used this book in our homeschool here.

But, you're asking, where is Middle Earth?  Narnia?  Well, of course.  But everyone knows about those.  

Enjoy more Top Tens at Oh Amanda.

6 comments:

LaVonne said...

I don't know any of those books :) But I do love juvenile and young adult fiction. :)

Blessings to you and thanks for sharing.

ohAmanda said...

Oooh, yay! I love a good book list and I have never read ANY of these!

a

Anonymous said...

I LOVE the Phantom Tollbooth but haven't heard of the rest of these. When I taught jr high I was much more aware of good books and now that my son is learning to read I'm looking for books to read aloud to him . . . but there's a good 10-yr gap there of books that I don't know about. Thanks for the suggestions!

Mommy the Maid said...

I have only heard of a few of these. Thank you for the list! My mom used to read Little House on the Prairie books with me.

Kerri said...

Wow, you have a completely different list than me! Most of these I've never even heard of. I'll have to try them out. My boys are at the age where they just eat up read aloud time. :)

Thanks for linking my shop BTW! :)

Leslie said...

I've only read the first on your list and loved it. My kids may have read some of the others but most of them do not ring any bells. Thanks for the recommendations!