Children's Books that I Hate to Read

I love reading books to my three-year-old daughter. In fact, there are few things in the world that give me more joy. I don't, however, like reading bad children's books. Reading page after page of a tiring, boring book feels like a bizarre and inhumane form of torture. Perhaps, in the innermost circles of Hell, the immortal souls of bad parents are forced to read the same awful children's books over and over again.

There are plenty of bad kids' books out there, but a few of them take the cake. These are books that I absolutely, positively hate to read to my daughter.

The Little Engine that Could, by Watty Piper

It's a classic with a good moral, but this book is mind-numbingly boring from cover to cover. The illustrations are drab and creepy-- one page shows a couple of dancing bottles of milk next to a few spinach leaves, which are supposed to be gifts for children. A monstrous Pennywise of a clown adorns each page, and the illustrations don't match the text on each page. I like the story itself, but I'd rather tell it my way than read this yawner.

The Berenstain Bears Series, by Stan and Jan Berenstain

I loved this series when I was a kid, but the stories now leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. The Berenstain Bear family is a sickeningly idealized 1950s family, with two "perfect" parents (a working dad and stay-at-home mom), two (later three) completely "normal" children, an upper-middle-class home, and no serious problems to speak of. The entire series is such a saccharine cliche that I feel nauseated just a few words into each book.

Skippyjon Jones Series, by Judy Schachner

I'd heard so many good things about the books in this series that I was excited when I spotted it at our local library. I was absolutely stunned by how revoltingly and overtly racist the books are. They display every possible "Mexican" stereotype, with the main character speaking about nothing but frijoles and tacos in broken English, a badly transcribed "accent," and everything ending in "-ito." I hated reading this book because I felt uncomfortable "reading" to my daughter in an insulting parody of a Spanish accent, and don't want to teach that kind of discrimination to my kid. Am I being overly P.C.? Maybe, but I'm not picking that one up again.

Amelia Bedelia Series, by Peggy Parish

These children's books were hilarious to me when I myself was a kid, but I now hate reading them to my own child. Kids find it incredibly funny when adults do silly things, so the funny antics of Amelia Bedelia-- a maid who isn't very bright and takes everything literally. The puns in these books are lame and vapid, and the storylines all end predictably, with Amelia making up for all of her airheady mistakes by cooking well. What a role model for young girls.