The best children’s books to read at home

There is noth­ing bet­ter than an evening with a child over a good book. The main thing is not to make a mis­take with the choice. A selec­tion of tru­ly cozy and excit­ing books will allow the child to immerse him­self in the mag­i­cal world of books, take a dif­fer­ent look at every­thing that sur­rounds him, and how to relax.

“Vacations of Petrov and Vasechkin”, Vladimir Alenikov (6+)

What else to do at home, how not to read books about the adven­tures of cheer­ful friends? Vasya Petrov and Petya Vasechkin are one of those bosom com­rades, from whom the entourage either howls, or grabs his head, or is sur­prised.

Par­ents, of course, do not need to get acquaint­ed with these char­ac­ters: they prob­a­bly know them from Sovi­et films that have gained wild pop­u­lar­i­ty among school­child­ren through­out the Sovi­et Union.

The child will not only be able to laugh at the fun­ny sit­u­a­tions in which Petrov, Vasechkin and their lady of the heart Masha Start­se­va find them­selves every now and then, but even sym­pa­thize with the heroes who find them­selves in a bor­ing and bor­ing pio­neer camp. After all, as you know, vaca­tions are need­ed for cin­e­ma and boat­ing, “and in the camp, vaca­tions are one tor­ment!”

“How to Train Your Dragon” by Cressida Cowell (12+)

In the old days, every self-respect­ing Viking had his own drag­on. But first, the young Viking had to catch the drag­on, which in itself is not easy. And then — tame him. What is even more dif­fi­cult. The whole thing is called the Drag­on Tri­al. Any­one who does not pass it is expelled from the tribe. The main char­ac­ter, Hic­cup, the son of the leader of the Shag­gy Hooli­gans tribe, has to go through such a dif­fi­cult and even life-threat­en­ing task. And how he will cope with it, you will learn by read­ing this book.

“My family and other animals”, Gerald Durrell (5+)

The humor­ous auto­bi­og­ra­phy of the for­eign “Niko­lai Droz­dov” at one time cap­ti­vat­ed all read­ers, young and old. The author, with his inher­ent sense of humor, describes his child­hood adven­tures on the Greek island of Cor­fu, where he moved with his entire huge fam­i­ly — his moth­er, broth­ers and sis­ter. It was here that the future zool­o­gist for the first time began to tru­ly learn the unknown and study the won­der­ful world of ani­mals.

It is impos­si­ble to remain indif­fer­ent to such a cozy, cheer­ful and inspir­ing book. Many top­ics are inter­twined here: the prob­lem of fathers and chil­dren, the prob­lem of find­ing one­self, the prob­lem of good and evil. And best of all, the sto­ry is told in a slight­ly swash­buck­ling style — the per­fect book to share a laugh and let go of wor­ries.

“Petson is sad”, Sven Nurdqvist (0+)

The work “Pet­son is sad” is part of the cycle of the writer Sven Nur­dqvist about the old man Pet­son and his cat Find­us. What is inter­est­ing about this book? The author plunges his hero into a state of autumn melan­choly, and the rest­less cat does every­thing to cheer up his friend.

The seem­ing­ly ordi­nary sit­u­a­tion begins to play with bright col­ors from how Find­us is try­ing to return Pet­son to a pos­i­tive mood. The author cre­ates a tru­ly warm, kind, sin­cere sto­ry that will ide­al­ly com­ple­ment home read­ing with a child on a cloudy gray evening.

“The Extraordinary Adventures of Karik and Vali”, Jan Larry (0+)

There is noth­ing more excit­ing than read­ing about the fan­tas­tic trav­els of your peers! And the book “The Extra­or­di­nary Adven­tures of Karik and Vali” is direct proof of this. The book became pop­u­lar more than 80 years ago, and after being filmed and trans­lat­ed into for­eign lan­guages, the work was includ­ed in the list of the best chil­dren’s books.

The main fea­ture of “Adven­tures” is that the author in an artis­tic and adven­ture man­ner tells chil­dren about how our world works and about who inhab­its it.

Karik and Valya, broth­er and sis­ter, acci­den­tal­ly drink a lemon­ade-like elixir cre­at­ed by the sci­en­tist Eno­tov. Because of this, they decrease sev­er­al times, and there­fore are forced to look for a way out, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­tect­ing them­selves from dan­ger­ous insects and wan­der­ing among plants.

“Grandmother! Frieder shouts, Gudrun Mebs (0+)

How many books have been writ­ten about moth­ers, fathers, broth­ers and sis­ters … And so lit­tle about grand­moth­ers! The Ger­man writer Gudrun Mebs decid­ed to cor­rect this injus­tice by cre­at­ing a whole col­lec­tion of every­day sto­ries about lit­tle Frieder and his grand­moth­er.

Despite the absence of fairies, drag­ons and wands in the book, it is still inter­est­ing to read it. The work cap­ti­vates with its sim­ple humor, famil­iar every­day sto­ries, mutu­al jokes. Frieder and his grand­moth­er are not just rel­a­tives. They are true friends who are not infe­ri­or to each oth­er in the spir­it of adven­tur­ism and imme­di­a­cy.