TalkTalk Tales, our search for the country’s best amateur storyteller, seems to have sparked a national debate about parents reading to their kids – are we doing it enough, and just why is it so good for your children?
Children’s authors Julia Donaldson, who wrote The Gruffalo, and Charlie Higson, who writes stories about the young James Bond, responded to our competition in The Sun.
They both suggested that reading led to a more rounded child – one who could make the transition to school more comfortably and who could relate their own feelings to those of their favourite fictional characters. There is also the intimacy and bond that reading to a child establishes, not to mention the sheer enjoyment – in some families there is debate as to who prefers the bedtime story more, child or parent!
All the more worrying, then, that our research found that over half of the UK’s adults believe bedtime stories are dying out – and further encouragement to rediscover your storytelling abilities and enter our competition!
And to inspire you even more, our research also uncovered the nation’s favourite bedtime story. We’re sure that the top 12 will bring back a few memories – we think they’re all classics:
1. Famous Five, Enid Blyton
2. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
3. Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, H.C. Andersen
4. Mr Men, Roger Hargreaves
5. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne
6. The Tales of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter
7. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
8. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
9. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
10. The BFG, Roald Dahl
11. The Cat in the Hat, Dr Suess
12. The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling
These are the favourites from yesteryear, but what about now… are you still reading Famous Five stories to your child? And please chip-in to the debate – what makes bedtime reading so special for you?
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