By Megan Corrent

Reading time is one of our favorite activities. If your family is anything like mine, you know that this can be a wonderful activity…  Or one that grinds on your last nerve when your kid is obsessed with the worst book. There have been a several books that we have found over the last few months that have become favorites, and one in particular that has been a BIG hit! I wanted to share some of these literature gems in hopes that you find a new favorite as well so that the worst book might get misplaced for a while and no one will notice.

First up: Cyril’s Big Adventure. This one came to us by way of Grandma along with a super cute sloth, of course named Cyril. Cyril is a sloth who lives in the humid depths of the Costa Rican rainforest with his brother Horace. Cyril has a great dream to travel to far-away places. So, he decides to do just that. The story takes you through his adventures in a new big city. He tries restaurants, parks, even gets an ice cream treat. In the end, Cyril learns that adventures can be fun, but spending time at home with family is even better.

Next up: The Friend Ship. This story is one of my personal favorites. A sweet little hedgehog is very lonely and begins a journey to find a ship that is full of friends (a “friend ship” – cute, huh?). She first encounters a curious beaver who wants to join on her on her quest. They board a ship and start sailing to find the friend ship. On their journey they find more and more lonely animals in need of friends. In the end, they learn that all of them gathered together on their ship is the friend ship they have been searching for all along.  I love this book, not only because I had a pet hedgehog named Gwyneth growing up, but mostly because of the sweet lesson that to find friends, sometimes you just need to look around you.

Last but not least: We Don’t Eat Our Classmates. My 2-year old is completely obsessed with this story and it’s become a multiple-times a night kind of book.  Which is fine, because it is adorable. Penelope Rex is starting school and she is nervous (what will her classmates be like? will they also like ponies?). As her name suggests, Penelope is a T-Rex, but come the first day of school, all of her classmates happen to be children -which are super delicious for dinosaurs. So she eats them (her teacher makes her spit them out).  We love this story (and laugh particularly hard when the goldfish takes a CHOMP out of Penelope to teach her a lesson) not only because it is adorably written, but because it has great lessons on friendship and loving people who are different from you. As it turns out, when you are learning to make friends, it’s best not to eat them (even if they spilled bar-b-q sauce on themselves).

I hope you and your little ones find just as much enjoyment out of these stories as we have and  help you both enjoy reading time a little bit more.