Ages ago, so long ago that his five-year-old boy might be six now, my pal Steve from college asked me if I could recommend books for his five-year-old son to enjoy. At the top of my list of Most Versatile Children's Books is the 20th-Century Children's Book Treasury -- I could not tally the number of hours I have spent reading that book to various children.
Five, at the beginning stages of literacy, is a good age to revisit some of the rhyming Dr. Seuss books that might have been out of the rotation for a while. Stella loved Hop on Pop with a fiery ardor when she was a toddler, and then she came back to it when she was beginning to string sounds into words.
You can also go in the opposite direction, and enjoy books with more complex text and pictures. I mentioned St. George and the Dragon in the version of this post that I wrote when Steve's son was 3, but it's one we've gone back to again and again with multiple kids. One of my sons has a peculiar devotion to The Ship's Cat (as in, he can recite almost all of it) that began when he was a wee little guy.
Five is also a great age for sharing longer stories. The Giraffe, the Pelly, and Me is a fun Roald Dahl story -- more picture book than chapter book, but it will probably take a couple of sittings to finish. This graphic novel rendition of The Hobbit has primed all five of our kids to enjoy the full-length version. And have I mentioned our Marcia Williams fandom before? That link goes to her book of Greek myths, which was more popular with the boys than the Shakespeare books that Stella prefers.
It has been five years now since I had a five-year-old boy of my own, so I'm interested in other perspectives. What books did your five-year-old boys love?
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