Children's Books for Old-School Parents in Modern Times

Books by Bloom are written for kids ages 4-8. The 5-Minute Bedtime Stories lean a bit older than the picture books. Any 6, 7, and 8-year-olds will love them with no hesitation. Your 4 or 5-year-olds will most-likely love these, but there area few elements that may be intense (action scenes/drama). I'd advise a quick scan of the stories before you read-aloud to those younger ones. 

There are captivating illustrations in What Good is Good and Did God Make That? There are NO illustrations in the 5-Minute Modern-Day Bedtime Stories. This is intentional. The books are designed as read-alouds for sleepy children. Savannah always found illustrations awkward to position and distracting for bedtime. Kids LOVE picture-books, but it is also pleasant to introduce books that allow imaginations to run free AND sleepy eye-lids to close.  Savannah's boys (and many others) love picture-free read-alouds. If you haven't tried them, give them a shot!

If you are wanting clean books that uphold universal values like honesty, patience, kindness, and self-control that are also free of references to God or Jesus, then the 5-Minute Modern-Day Bedtime Stories are the books for you!  The rest of the books, including the 5-Minute Modern-Day CHRISTIAN Bedtime Story volume are geared toward a Christian audience, with Bible references and lessons that reveal God to be the source of all those good values we cherish.

Savannah does not have anything against them, except she believes their usefulness and relevance are continuing to drop. It seems many of them do not teach any meaningful lessons, and even more are so out-of-date that kids just don't understand what they mean. 

For instance:

• Little Miss Muffet sat on a...what's it?
• Humpty Dumpty had a great fall...then his helpers give up.
• Jack fell down the hill and broke his crown(?) and fixed it with vinegar and brown paper. What?
• This old man, he played one, he played knick-knack on my thumb. Call the police!
• Jack goes up a beanstalk(?) and robs a giant...three times?

These are just a few examples where Savannah had trouble explaining stories to her kids. Instead, she wanted stories set in places they knew. And, instead of magic that they would never possess, she intrigues them with modern marvels of science - like holograms, virtual reality, and drones. 

In fact, Savannah has used many of the classics as inspiration! There is a boy who cries drone; there is a robot named Robostiltzskin that creates unlimited popsicles, and a story about a bully who knocks down three little snow forts.

While the stories include a few creatures, the protagonists are always normal kids who learn tried-and-true lessons in a contemporary setting. Savannah keeps the main characters human, because research shows that kids learn moral lessons best by watching and reading about other kids like them. So, while Savannah loves Daniel Tiger, the Berenstein Bears, and other great animal characters like them, she thought she'd stick with the most relatable characters she could - humans!

Here's the study she used:
Nicole E. Larsen, Kang Lee, Patricia A. Ganea. Do storybooks with anthropomorphized animal characters promote prosocial behaviors in young children? Developmental Science, 2017; e12590 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12590