5 Great Bedtime Stories for Your Young Reader

I’ve seen several newspaper articles that say bedtime stories are dead. Passé. You know, like newspapers. Or picture books. I don’t know. I have my doubts. Yes, I’ve largely stopped reading them to my 7 year old, who generally reads on his own at bedtime, but from ages 2 to 5 it was a nightly ritual.

 

Back then, it was all Thomas all the time. Thomas the Tank Engine books, stories I recapped from the series, and original stories as they came into my head. I also read plenty of Dr. Seuss, Clifford the Big Red Dog, and even my own rough drafts of children’s books (plenty of my picture books were born while putting Johnny K to bed).

 

So, do you still read bedtime stories to your children, or is The Baltimore Sun, et al, right?

 

5 Great Bedtime Stories

 

1.      Dinosaur vs. Bedtime by Bob Shea – a dinosaur defeats everything from spaghetti to pajamas, but he can’t beat sleep. Complete with a tiring *yawn* at the end, this funny picture book reminds your young dinosaur they have to sleep some time.
 

2.      Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson – Harold goes on plenty of dreamlike, moonlit adventures before returning home to the comfort of his own bed for a goodnight’s sleep.

3.      Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems – sure the pigeon does what every child does – fights to get away with staying up late, but the more he protests, the more tired he gets until zzzzz…

4.       Harry and Horsie by Katie Van Camp – Harry gives up going to bed to play with his best friend Horsie, the stuffed animal he sleeps with every night. They undertake an out-of-this world adventure captured in retro art right out of a 1950s comic book or the Sunday funnies.

 5.      Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown – OK, so this is the all-time classic kidlit goodnight. Rich artwork, simplistic story, and a child who says goodnight to everything. What’s not to love? A reminder throughout that bedtime is coming (and pair this with Peggy Rathmann’s Good Night, Gorilla for a funny ending…)

Hard to recommend 5 books when you want to list 50. I tried to stick to largely contemporary works, though Goodnight Moon and Harold were just too good to pass up. That said, I also love Maurice Sendak’s brilliant Where the Wild Things Are or the pastoral works of Kevin Henkes. Consider folktales filled with Jerry Pinkney’s wonderful watercolor, the traditional stories of Hans Christian Anderson, the long-winded but delightful works of Oscar Wilde…

 

So many great stories to put your little one to sleep. So what are your favorite bedtime stories? What tales do you remember best?