Our book tips for reading aloud

Nik Niethammer, Editor-in-Chief (son 10, daughter 8 years old)

If I had to name a sport that doesn't interest me at all, it would be football (and fly fishing). I find our son's passion for playing with the ball all the more astonishing. At first, I tried to gently counter this by constantly raving about my passion, cycling. Which only seemed to increase his enthusiasm for football.

Today, I regularly stand in goal and try to keep out our junior's increasingly accurate shots. So it's hardly surprising that our little Ronaldo likes football books. He is particularly fond of the 10-part series «Football Sharks». It tells the story of Pedro, who is never substituted and therefore finds himself a team. The book is aimed at all football fans aged 8 and over and was awarded the title of «Best German-language football children's book» in 2014.

Our daughter is just as much of a bookworm as I was when I was her age. With the subtle difference that I read under the duvet at night with a torch while our daughter clamps a reading lamp to the cover of her book. She is currently devouring the book «The School of Magical Animals - Holidays at Last». An exciting holiday thriller in short chapters - with a magical cat and lots of other magical animals.

Evelin Hartmann, Deputy Editor-in-Chief (two daughters, aged 7 and 4)

Lotta would have loved to fly to Mallorca for the Easter holidays - but instead she has to go to an organic farm in Bavaria. With her family, of course. And there she experiences a lot of things that look very familiar to our daughters. Because the two of them, 7 and 4, are also treated to a holiday trip to their father's homeland at least once a year. That's why they insist that the native Bavarian should read «Mein Lotta-Leben. The worm is in here!». «Please, please, Dad, one more time, you know what I mean!» Accompanied by delighted giggling and giggling, he starts a second, third and fourth time: «Go on, sneak off with your fleece. It hurts so bad, like a shoe, the one that's going to be taken over by the car.»

The little one is an absolute Liselotte fan, a cow with quite a few human features. My daughter loves looking at the beautifully drawn pictures and listening to the funny stories. Lieselotte has also grown on me and so I'm delighted with every volume I discover in the public library and can take home.

Benjamin Muschg, Head of Production (daughter 4 years old)

There is a considerable exchange of goods between us and the neighbouring Pestalozzi Library. This is because our four-year-old daughter grabs a small mountain of books and audio CDs from the shelves every time she visits, just following her spontaneous intuition.

Every now and then, we parents sneak in a work of art that meant something to us as a child, that we thought was particularly interesting, beautifully designed or educationally valuable. All of them are then consistently ignored at home. Our daughter would love to be read to around the clock from the others she has chosen herself. And sometimes it happens that a book becomes a firm favourite. This is what happened with «Mucker & Rosine» by Kristina Andres. We are now on the third instalment of this 165-page children's novel.

I too have now succumbed to the charm of the story of this amour fou between a city rabbit and a field mouse who come together in the forest. The language sparkles with surreal humour, the illustrations by Barbara Scholz are adorable, and the characters are fantastically original - from the unlikely pair of rodents to the trap-setting old fox and the owl, who is completely absorbed in her role as foster mother to a fire-breathing baby dragon. However, the plot seems so wonderfully confused to me that I wondered what the woodruff frenzy that the animals in the forest fall into in the book might stand for. But perhaps this perception is also due to the fact that, for us parents, the novel is made up of a random sequence of fragments of the plot due to the alternating bedtime reading service. Only our daughter knows the whole story.

Patrik Luther, Deputy Publishing Director (two daughters, 8 and 3 years old)

Antolin, the reading bird with the orange beak, is currently the clear reading driver for our second-grader with its platform. She's really keen to choose reading material that can be followed up with a quiz on the bird's portal. For several months now, the detectives «The Three !!!», Kim, Franziska and Marie, and the detectives «The Three ???», Justus, Peter and Bob, have been very popular. The friends are always solving new and exciting cases, and each sleuth with their own skills is indispensable in the team so that the mysterious incidents can be deciphered.

In the magical forest of friendship, friends Lili and Jessi discover that the animals here can talk, and experience lots of colourful adventures. Magical stories with enchanting illustrations, particularly suitable for beginner readers who love animals.

10-year-old Lotta tells the story from her very special diary: «My Lotta life». She desperately wants a pet and already has a good plan for how this could work out. However, an Indian recorder, which she got from mum Lotta, throws a spanner in the works, because it's really messing up her life. Lotta experiences lots of «pretty normal» things, but what is «normal»?

Of course, both girls love it when Mummy reads them a bedtime story after their teeth have been properly cleaned. Here we are currently visiting «Elin», the tree dwarf girl in Eriztal. The lively and imaginative dwarf girl has a very tricky problem to solve in volume 1: For some reason, the human travellers who normally wander through the Eritz Valley no longer play with the tree gnomes - even worse, they don't seem to notice them at all. Fortunately, Elin has a wise and helpful friend at her side in the shape of the long-eared owl «Berta», who helps to guide the humans back onto the right path. A wonderful story, written by Melanie Oesch and illustrated by Christina Wald.

Silvia Sempert is the author of Guet-Nacht-Gschichtli, volumes 1-3. The short, funny, adventurous and child-orientated stories are written in Swiss German, which is a great help when reading aloud to Dad. As (our) children want to hear stories over and over again, these books are stacked in the reading corner as standard and are happily pulled out by our story listeners.

Florina Schwander, Editorial Manager Online (daughter 6, twin boys 4 years old)

Sometimes I feel like we have a fourth child at home called Globi. He accompanies us everywhere: On long car journeys as an audio play and at home as bedtime reading. The advantage: the children enjoy looking at the books on their own from a very early age. Daughter's current favourite volume: «Globi in hospital».

«Hundred» is not a classic children's book and yet all three of them regularly want it as a bedtime story. The book uses simple illustrations to tell us everything we learn in life. That you are not alone on earth, that you will love and die, for example. We only look at a few pages at a time and are all somehow touched afterwards.

«Good Night, Gorilla», on the other hand, is a classic bedtime book for children. However, my children are only interested in the one double-page spread after the lights go out. And woe betide me if I forget even one sound ...