Anyone who has ever spent more than a minute in the same room as a human being under the age of ten will have noticed that adults and children have rather different energy levels and interests.
Fortunately, a device has been invented which is unmatched in its ability to bring these two species into physical and mental synchrony. This device is known as the book. The following is a personal choice of my favourite books for achieving inter-generational harmony, one for each age up to ten.
1 Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
There is something magical about this book, which works beautifully for pre-verbal children. This is a "story" that is actually all about the music of the words, and the way they fit with the unique and mesmerising pictures. Every baby should have a copy of this book as one of their first possessions.
2 Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet Ahlberg and Allan Ahlberg
Two-year-olds want the same book again and again and again. After three children, this is the only book for this age group that has never bored me. It's a puzzle and a game and a story and a poem and a work of art all rolled into one. It is also a early introduction to the concept of intertextuality.
3 The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway
I have the 30p edition given to me as a birthday present back in the 1970s, and I still really enjoy reading this book. It's funny and clever and in the perfection of the rhyme and meter it lays out the supremely effective model for this age group that was subsequently followed by Julia Donaldson. It is one of those books that simply cries out to be spoken aloud, with a small person on your knee.
4 The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers
All of Oliver Jeffers' books are beautiful, touching, soulful and strange, but this is my favourite. His style of illustration is truly unique, and he conjures up a new fictional universe with everything he writes. This is a visual feast that cries out for multiple readings.
5 I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen
Even the funniest books for children are often aiming (at best) for a smile or two. This one is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. My five-year-old daughter almost fell of her chair the first time we read it to her. You will feel like a star comedian every time you read this aloud. The phrase "You! You stole my hat!" has become a family catchphrase.
6 The Bears on Hemlock Mountain by Alice Dalgliesh
We have my wife's childhood Puffin edition, complete with wonderful woodcut illustrations. As a first chapter book, this is hard to beat. It has an exciting narrative that builds to a superb, tense climax, paced perfectly for a bedtime read. It appears to be out of print, which is crazy. Someone reprint this book!
7 You're a Bad Man, Mr Gum! by Andy Stanton
This is the place to start if you want to hear your child belly-laugh. I don't want to sound pompous, but I genuinely think Andy Stanton is the Laurence Sterne of children's literature. He tore up the rule book, and does things you wouldn't have thought were possible before entering the world of Mr Gum. More than any other children's writer, he shows how the novel is a form that allows you to do absolutely anything. And David Tazzyman's illustrations are comedy genius in their own right.
8 A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
As children start reading longer books, one of the curious experiences you have as a bedtime reader sharing the task with a spouse is reading books in alternating ten page chunks, without ever finding out exactly what happens in the missing sections. This is not how any writer wants to be read, but few books stand up to this treatment better than Lemony Snicket. There is joy to be had in the gothic richness of every sentence, with subtle jokes aimed at adults cleverly pitched to not exclude the listening child. The whole series is excellent, as are the audio books.
9 How To Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
By the time a child is nine, especially if you have younger siblings to look after at bed time, it is easy just to leave them to read on their own. But when you can find the time, it still a delight to snuggle up with a fluently reading child and a book, and read aloud. The How To Train Your Dragon series, about Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III's life and misadventures as a child Viking is perfect for this, with plenty of action, jokes, charm and preposterous names.
10 Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell
Author and illustrator Chris Riddell is something special. His strange and unique humour is more visual than verbal, and his books are beautiful objects. This is a supremely stylish book about the supremely stylish Ottoline and her undercover mission with a hairy non-human companion to solve crimes committed a wicked Yellow Cat. Nobody is too old for this book.
