qz thoughtsThe King of Ireland's Son
For reading aloud, one of my favorites is The King of Ireland's Son by Padraic Colum.
It's very clearly a transcription of a story with a long oral history to it. The structure of the story telling itself was interesting to me. There are many characters who appear as the central character or a supporting character in different sections, there are many places where digressions into other stories happen or could be made to happen, if you wanted to tell it in a different order. It has many of the standard tropes of fairy tales and also some amusing consequences of that. "Red Riding Hood" isn't a name, it's a decription. The title character, and overall central figure of this book, doesn't have a name, he is merely the eldest (of three, natch) sons of the King of Ireland.
There are a couple of places where a story obviously could have been tied in, to give more background on a character or thing, that have not been used. It gives you the opportunity to spin your own yarns into this or prompt your kids to do so.
For example, from whence comes the Little Sage of the Mountain? And where did the great wing for his house come from?
Final thought: "how you get from A to B is to travel while sharing stories".