Mentions: alittlebookhabit

The time has come. Little Miss Bookhabit is starting to investigate the world of chapter books. Now, that is not to say that we will be putting away the picture books any time soon. My love of picture books will last long after she has finished with them. But I also believe that reading books at different ages and stages of development helps you to discover new things that you didn’t see before. She is also just getting to grips with reading and so she loves picking up familiar books and half reciting, half reading the words in them. It gives her a huge sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when she gets to the end of something that isn’t a reading book from school. Most importantly, she still gets a great deal of pleasure from picture books. But she is now also excited by the idea of chapter books and the lure of something unknown and ‘grown up’.

Despite being a KS1 and 2 teacher, my repertoire of chapter books is a tiny drop in the ocean in comparison to what I know about picture books. It tends to be based on a few failsafe authors and the classics that we read at school (Roald Dahl, Michael Morpurgo, The Iron Man, that kind of thing) so I thought it would be fun to share our journey into chapter books with you. I have no doubt that we will read some that we love and some that don’t capture our imagination in the same way and it will be very much a case of trial and error (thank goodness for libraries!) but I’m excited to dive in. I’m also interested to know if you have any recommendations for us.

So far, I know that the chapter books have to still include illustrations. They need to be reasonably short to suit her five year old attention span. She prefers chapter books that make her laugh. She isn’t bothered if the main character is male or female but she seems to like people rather than animals.

I’m working on a wishlist of books to see us through the next few months and will be posting what we read on @alittlebookhabit on instagram as #chapterbooktuesday so if you are at a similar stage do join in and share what you are enjoying and/or have a go at reading some of the ones we’ve enjoyed. Happy reading!