“One of my greatest joys as a parent was reading my favourite children’s novels to my own kids, fascinated by their reactions,” says novelist Joanna Briscoe. Her childhood favourite, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, went down just as well with her children, who were spellbound.
“They too loved the magical transformation of orphaned Sara’s attic, yet it was me alone who swallowed tears at her rescue – read for possibly the 30th time – while they guffawed at their pathetic mum until I joined in the laughter,” she remembers.
Children’s author and poet Michael Rosen says he loved reading – and sometimes singing – Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s The Smartest Giant in Town to his children. “It’s got a lovely lilt to it” so “even a bad singer like me can make up a tune to fit the words,” he says.
Poet Raymond Antrobus says his son loves Chris Haughton’s picture books. Shh! We Have a Plan is the one the poet enjoys reading aloud the most, “because it’s got the least text in it”, so you can add bits in to the story yourself if you want to. A lot of it is onomatopoeic, too, which both he and his son enjoy.
Antrobus has also tested his own children’s books – the latest of which, Terrible Horses, illustrated by Ken Wilson-Max, is on the shortlist for Oscar’s book prize – on his son. “I put them on his shelf and just see if he picks them up on his own” – which, so far, thankfully, he has.
Horrid Henry author Francesca Simon is also a Chris Haughton fan, with Oh No, George! being the book she reads “to anyone who will listen”.
“George is a dog who’s eager to behave when his owner goes out, but a cake, the cat, etc are just too tempting. Everyone can shriek ‘OH NO, GEORGE!’ as cakes are gobbled, cats are chased, holes are dug and the house is trashed,” she says.
Novelist Nell Zink likes reading to her friends’ children, “assuming they’ve been trained by their parents to pay attention”. Her favourite is Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág, the story of a lonely elderly couple. The wife decides she wants a cat, so her husband goes to find her one and comes across a hillside covered in “cats here, cats there, Cats and kittens everywhere. Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, Millions and billions and trillions of cats …”
“The illustrations are so beautiful,” Zink says. “It’s sort of minimal and elegant and really expressive.”
Finding a book that both adults and children enjoy reading together isn’t always easy. Antrobus says his and his son’s tastes match up about half of the time, but says he has quite a few books that his son absolutely loves which make him think “ah, no, please not this one,” he says. “Sometimes I hide them.”
And Briscoe admits that when reading A Little Princess to her children, she “instinctively skipped over some of the longer descriptive passages, aware that Gen Z attention spans may not tolerate too many sunsets and sparrows on roofs”.
“This seemed sacrilege, yet a necessary compromise,” she says.
Poet and novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave and her husband, artist Tom de Freston, have been enjoying reading The Café at the Edge of the Woods by Mikey Please to their daughter lately – the story of an aspiring chef who opens a cafe beside an enchanted wood, which won this year’s Waterstones children’s book prize. “We are as much fans as our two-year-old daughter. The surprising, even subversive rhyming scheme keeps you interested and can withstand multiple concurrent rereads without making you want to tear your hair out,” she says. “There’s the opportunity for some fun voices, and of course the illustrations are sublime. Combined with the fact you can read the text in low light, it’s a winner at bedtime!
Shh! We Have a Plan by Chris Haughton. Photograph: Chris Haughton
