The Land Before Time :: Read Aloud Thursday

Time for another Read Aloud Thursday hosted by Amy at Hope is in the Word.

We actually read this book a few months back but I'm just getting around to mentioning it. Hoping to give a nod to all of our Read Alouds before the end of the year so that I can include them on our list of books read in 2011. I have a few stockpiled that I should get around to talking about.

Bookworm1 is a reluctant chapter book reader. He likes them ok and won't complain too loudly in reading them. But sitting still for a long time and having a story go on and on (and on) is not his favorite thing to do at the moment. He'll read picture books until the cows come home but chapter books slow him down. Whenever I can find a short book that still qualifies as a chapter book, I snatch it up.

Being that he is a fan of the movie The Land Before Time, when I saw a copy of The Land Before Time: The Illustrated Story at Goodwill, I snatched it up. (It's apparently so rare I can't find a link for it anywhere, nor can I find a picture of the cover art.) The total length of the book is 63 pages so it's not incredibly long, but nor is it a simple picture book. Filled with pictures from the movie, it follows the screen version remarkably well. Best yet (in my opinion), it is divided up into nine chapters, each containing quite a bit of text. We read it chapter by chapter over a period of a couple of days and he loved it. (He would have read it all in one sitting but I wouldn't let him.)

I can't really say that I'm a fan of reading "junior novelizations" of movies. I'm not a proponent of that. Or, maybe I just don't like to think that I am. (I've toyed with the idea of getting the junior novelization of Finding Nemo but haven't let myself go that far at this point in time.) I want to encourage him to read, of course, but I'd also like to think he's spending his reading time with quality work. The Land Before Time isn't quality. It's the movie in book form. Having re-watched the movie a time or two, I wouldn't say that it is quality either. However, I would say that the characters are quite memorable. I loved the film growing up so I won't begrudge my children the enjoyment of being able to watch it also! (Carrie Trivia alert: I won a stuffed Spike from Pizza Hut when the original movie first came out and I saved it until very recently when I finally forced myself to purge my old stuff animals.)

Maybe this particular book isn't quality work, but it was quality time with my son. And maybe every so often we can enjoy these "candy" reads. Not all the time, because I do believe that would be unhealthy. But every now and again a treat is nice. Having my son thoroughly enjoy a chapter book is nice. So we'll go with the flow and look for better opportunities in the future.