Hi there.  Luke here.  I’m four and a half years old now.  I still enjoy reading picture books either with my parents or by myself, but I also really enjoy being read longer, more difficult books, too.  My mom has tried Magic Treehouse (not engaging enough for me), Magic Schoolbus (I like them but they are pretty complicated), and some Roald Dahl books (I’m definitely not ready to talk about child abuse and parents dying!), but the Toys trilogy by Emily Jenkins has been the first series to really stick.

The chapter books are about the adventures of three toy friends (and a few other supporting characters like a one-eared sheep, a rocking horse, and a bath towel): Plastic, a rubber ball; Stingray, a blue plush stingray; and Lumphy, a stuffed buffalo.  They belong to a little girl whose name (they are pretty sure) is Honey.

I enjoyed these books for a number of reasons:

1) SOUND EFFECTS!  I love sound effects!  They make me laugh and keep me engaged.  Seriously, who doesn’t think “Fwuuumpa! (baggle baggle)” is funny?  Ok, how about “Fwap! Gobble-a gobble-a”?  And “Grunk, gru-GRUNK!”  When Stingray gets scared, she makes this sound, “Frrrrrrrr.”  My mom does a great job with this sound–I laugh every time.

2) Songs!  Sprinkled throughout the stories are funny little songs.  My favorite is sung by Frank, the washing machine.  Did you know that washing machines get lonely and need dance parties, too?

3) Just the right level.  Some longer chapter books have too many words that I don’t know, and when there are too many of them, I have a hard time following the story.  But these books had only a few words that I didn’t know, and my mom would either define them for me or I could piece together what they meant from context.

4) The story.  As a kid who finds social interactions challenging, these books gave me many examples of how friends can interact.  From fights to making up to feeling empathy for others to having fun, the toys in the stories, with their distinct personalities and strengths and weaknesses, provided models of friendship for me.  The toys’ adventures are also laugh-out-loud funny, touching, and a bit philosophical. (The last two pages of the third book made my mom cry.  She said that the ideas about existence in them were beautiful.  They were ok, I thought, but she said that I’d better understand them when I got a little older…)

So if you’re looking for a series to read to an older preschooler, Kindergartner, or first grader, check out the Toys books!

Happy reading!

–Luke (age 4.5)

Clicking on a book will take you to Amazon.com, and if you decide to buy the book, a portion of your purchase comes back to me.  I, in turn, will use the profits to purchase books for our local library or for a children’s literacy project.