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Comment by justinpaulson | Hacker News Reader

I've read Go, Dog, Go about 100 times to my daughter and she still yells for it almost every night, we have hundreds of books, come on!

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Since having a kid I relate to Calvin's dad in Calvin and Hobbes a lot more.

Dad: "Anything but Hamster Huey! It's the same story every day!"

Calvin: "I WANT HAMSTER HUEY!"

... (later)

Calvin: "Wow, the story was different that time."

Hobbes: "Do you think the townsfolk will ever find Hamster Huey's head?"

[0] http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/10/06

Does your kid enjoy Calvin and Hobbes?

I remember going through that stage with my kids. To keep myself stimulated I'd add an extra bit here, a funny voice there, kept what worked and kept building and building on top of the actual text in the books. It was like a performance after a while, and of course, my poor wife would never do it "right" when she read it.

my wife does "Skippy Jon Jones" like a one-woman broadway show. The kids won't even bother asking me to read anything now. If mom is not available, they just go straight to bed . Dad's performance is lacking.

That book kind of begs for the performance.

When I'm not sure if the kids are tuned in or not, I randomly substitute a noun with "gorilla".

Turns out they're pretty much always tuned in. But I still like to check sometimes. They've moved from noticing it, to being annoyed by it, to now making a theatrical production out of how annoyed they are by it (but are clearly enjoying it).

As a bonus, it keeps me on my toes for the time most entertaining to me to substitute:

    I do not like green eggs and ham,
    I do not like them, Gorilla-I-Am

The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Gorilla

    Goodnight comb and goodnight brush
    Goodnight nobody,
    Goodnight brush,
    And goodnight to the gorilla whispering "hush"...

My 3 year old daughter asks every night (for the past month) for "The Napping House", in which we have verious sleeping creatures stacked on top, with much repetition. She ALWAYS asks me to swap the adjectives -- e.g., "snoozing dog, dozing cat" rather than "dozing dog, snoozing cat". She gets it right every darn time, too.

She even wants to swap the words that have plot-meaning -- like, why is the mouse wakeful, and how does a slumbering flea bite the wakeful mouse? /shrug. It's been my carrot to get her to try and read it herself.

Agreed, at least with Go, Dog, Go it teaches a lot of concepts and I always pause to ask her questions like, "Where's the boat?" "Can you point to the banjo?" "Can you count the dogs that have hats on?" etc.

I can remember the fish in the boat scene, but the banjo has me mystified.

Three dogs, at a party, on a boat, at night :)

One has a banjo.

ha excellent, i'm the same as that - my kids stories are getting more exciting!

I had a kid who insisted on playing Three Billy Goats with her dolls with me over and over again. I got bored enough with it that I started doing variations, like giving the troll underneath the bridge two heads and arguing with myself. She was displeased at first (because, you know, going off script) and then asked me to do it again.

Spontaneity was really hard to re-run. =/

> To keep myself stimulated I'd add an extra bit here

If I change so much as a preposition when I'm reading a beloved book, my kids will instantly call me out on it.

I think as adults, we read to experience novelty and to change ourselves. Children are immersed in a world where they are surrounded by things that are new to them and often overwhelming. At bedtime, I think they want books for the exact opposite reason—for the safety and familiarity. To know that after all of the day's adventures, some of the things they already know—their memory of the book—are still true and correct. That they can build knowledge and it will continue to be relevant over time.

It's mind-numbingly boring for me, but they love it. I try to think of it like singing them a lullaby. For some reason, we're more accepting of repetition in song form over prose (how often have you listened to the same recording in your life?), but there's no real fundamental difference in them.

Once when I was not going to be able to continue to read the same book for a while (business trip), I made a video that consisted of the pages of the book with me reading it off-camera.

I don't know how many times he watched it, but it lost its charm. So it's not entirely about familiarity; I'm sure a big part of it is connection.

Enjoy it while you still can :). My children were the same way. Now they are making jokes at my pronunciations and grammars. [English is not my first language.]

I've so far prevented that with a system. So read books go in the corner, and we only pick up books from the shelf. When the shelf is empty, or near empy, the read-books stash moves into the shelf again. Never had to argue about it, that's just the way we do.

Been in this stage with my son for awhile. I had "I'm just a fish" memorized and could recite it to him without looking at the book.

His latest books he just loves to have read to him over and over are "The Gruffalo" and several of the author's other books (Gruffalo's Child, Room on the Broom, Snail and the Whale, etc).

He also loves to watch the animated shorts on Hulu/netflix (no Snail on the Whale though, just the others).

We let our son fill in the ends of sentences. He picks up on them surprisingly fast. I think when he wants to read a book over and over he's trying to memorize it. The benefit of this approach ("hack"?) is that over time he gradually takes over more and more of the "reading", lessening the weariness of the reader!

I've read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?" by Eric Carle so many times that I can recite it from memory. I started doing it in funny accents first, then I translated it into French(which I speak) then Dutch(which I don't). It's kind of interesting learning a language from the ground up.

Parents also read to me just a few books hundred times. I especially enjoyed the bits that rhyme. I think it stimulates in the same way as songs do, that's why people comeback to poetry more often than novels.

I wouldn't read Golang to my daughter though ;)

Reading to my child was how I first discovered why poetic writing was beautiful. If you are reading something out loud, several times (in some cases 100x) it so much more enjoyable when the writing makes your mouth and brain feel good.

One of my favorite books is "The Little Island" by Margaret Wise Brown (yes, of Goodnight Moon fame). Sometimes I pick this book to read to him, not because he requests it, but because it helps me relax.

At the peak I was reading "Goodnight Moon" at a pace of ~5000 times per year, that was only for a couple weeks though.

I plan on reading "Goodnight Dune" [1] to my daughter.

Funny that the article's author wrote of Dune as one of the books to be read over and over. I used to do that. I've only read it 7 times, though, not 100.

[1] http://goodnightdune.com/

I keep trying with the Dune series, but the big-O time is n^2 when you read them like this:

Dune<pause> Dune, Dune Messiah<pause> Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune<pause> Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune <pause> Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune <pause>

I don't think I have it in me to do that again for Chapterhouse: Dune.

I don't think I could get through all 6 books again. I did read all of the prequels and "Dune 7" but they were utter crap (not written by Frank Herbert but based on his notes).

Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune are worthwhile. But the sex-witches-fleeing-the-machines combined with everybody's a Kwizatz Haderach got a little tiresome. (I now picture Oprah gleefully shouting, "You're a Kwisatz Haderach... and you're a Kwisatz Haderach... everyone gets to be a Kwisatz Haderach!"

My kids went through an intense Fox in Socks stage, to the point where I could blast through the whole thing at double-speed, which made them love it even more.

These days will be over before you know it. Relish every reading and just be present in the moment. Do you like my party hat?

"Go around again!"

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