My 4.5 year old daughter and I have been enjoying listening to audiobooks together in the car, but I'm not sure what to listen to next! We've listened to and enjoyed the Dealing With Dragons books and the Lumberjanes novels, and both have been rousing successes. What should we listen to next?
In general, I'm looking for books that are preschooler-appropriate, but not particularly "books for preschoolers." Everything we've been listening to so far has been middle-grade type books, but very gentle. I'd generally like to avoid books that are violent or have much in the way of darker themes (in particular, would like to avoid the oh-so-common trope of "dead/missing parents"), and would prefer books without a lot of unkindness/cruelty/general interpersonal nastiness. I'd also like to avoid too much general problematic-ness; teachable moments are okay, but would rather not make it too much of an uphill battle against pervasive stereotyping / gender roles / etc.
Some things I've considered but chosen not to pursue for now:
* The Dark is Rising - a bit much into the good & evil, perhaps a bit too scary; just generally feels a bit old for her?
* So You Want to be a Wizard - also just feels a BIT too old and potentially scary?
* Assorted Dianne Wynne Jones books - this feels like it COULD be a next good step, I just vaguely remember Chrestomanci books having some surprisingly dark bits (something about butchering mermaids?? that can't be right, can it?), etc
* Hilda novelizations - we've done the graphic novels and the TV show and I just don't know if I have *another* medium in me for these
* Edward Eager (Half Magic, etc) - I don't remember these well enough to feel comfortable with them, both from a "problematic 50s-isms" and a violence perspective (I vaguely recall a lot of chopping people up with swords, but perhaps I'm making that up?)
* Books pitched a bit younger, e.g. Kitty and the Moonlight Rescue - she does well with these sorts of things at bedtime, but I'd rather something that's a BIT more enjoyable for me.
One challenge is I don't remember a lot of this era books very well from my own childhood, so I'm a bit anxious about picking something, missing the mark, and landing in something that's going to just provoke way more discussion than I'm looking for out of something that should basically be serving the role of "get us through this car ride calmly."
So basically, positive adventure novels that will be interesting and engaging for a preschooler, but won't drive me up the wall to listen to and discuss. We will be listening to these as audiobooks, ideally from Libro.fm, so bonus points if it has a particularly great audio version (or, I suppose, if you know that the audio version is abysmally bad)! Thank you for your ideas! |
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