One of the things that I enjoy about fatherhood is sharing bedtime stories with my son. When he was younger I made the stories up. They were filled with dinosaurs, hobbits, elves and wizards. I spun tales which mixed the universes of J.R.R. Tolkien and Anne McCaffrey with a little smattering of Jurassic Park for good measure!
More recently, I've been reading to him. He reads fluently and voraciously but at bedtime he likes to be read to. We alternate between German and English books. Discovering together some of the great children's literature in German has been a special pleasure. Highlights over the last few months have been the Sams books of Paul Maar, and the books of Astrid Lindgren (of course she wrote originally in Swedish but we read them in German).
Astrid Lindgren is best known for the Pippi Langstrumpf books but some of her other books such as Die Kinder aus Bullerbü are simply wonderful in the way that they paint a picture of life in the Swedish countryside in a bygone age.
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bedtime stories, Astrid Lindgren, Paul Maar