This summer The Five-Year-Old with characteristic enthusiasm has enrolled in not one, but two reading programs: our local library’s Dream Big, Read! reading program and the Imagination’s Destination Summer Reading program at Barnes & Noble. The library’s program asks The Five-Year-Old to review the books she reads. Here are a few of her favorites.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
By Kate DiCamillo
Illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline
Candlewick Press, 2006

What The Five-Year-Old thought: “Edward was called Malone, Edward, all kinds of names. He had a dented pocket watch after the maid swept him with a vacuum cleaner. And I think people would like reading about that. I hated that he had his heart broken and that he didn’t know about love. But I loved loved loved the ending. He wore a red suit sometimes and red pants sometimes.”

What Mommyo Thought: “Easily the best book I’ve read all year. At times funny, at others heart-breaking, with a strong whiff of fable throughout. I found it impossible to read just one chapter at a time. I read this to The Five-Year-Old in three bursts — the first four chapters, the next nine, then straight through to the end because neither of us could bear to stop. It’s been a really long time since I couldn’t bear to stop reading any book, much less a children’s chapter book, especially when bedtime is on the line. Run to your library to get yourself a copy. You don’t need a child to love this one.”

Lighthouse Lullaby
By Kelly Briggs
Downeast Books, 2001

What the Five-Year-Old Thought: “I really liked it. It was about how it was to run a lighthouse 100 years ago. He had to put all his livestock away for the snowstorm.”

What Mommyo Thought: “A cozy read. Not really a detailed essay on how to run a lighthouse, but rather an idyllic picture of what it might have been like to be the child of a lighthouse keeper on a snowy night in Maine.”

The Night Before Kindergarten
By Natasha Wing
Illustrated by Julie Durrell
Grosset & Dunlap, 2001

What The Five-Year-Old Thought: “It was the night before kindergarten and all through the house nothing was awake except I think for the parents. The kids were sleeping while visions of school supplies danced in their heads. Then they hopped in cars like they were boarding a spaceship to Mars. It’s great great great to read. But at the end it made me droop because the parents were sad. The book made me sad and happy and a little bit flabbergasted because the book was just like the real world.”

What Mommyo Thought: “That about covers it, The Five-Year-Old.”

(Psst…. If you’re on Goodreads, you can see the complete list of the books The Five-Year-Old has read for the Dream Big, Read! program on my Goodreads/Dream Big 2012 – Children’s Books shelf.)

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• The Five-Year-Old Reviews Books: Dragons, Knights, and Brains, Oh My! (caterpickles.com)
• The Five-Year-Old Reviews Books: Frogs, Dinosaurs, & Borrowers, Oh My! (caterpickles.com)

Cross-posted on BostonWriters.