My Six-Year-Old's Essential Summer Reading

We’re moving in fourteen days.

It hit me this morning, as I carried the baby into the kitchen to start my day, that even my morning routine is going to change. I won’t look out large windows at the Shawangunks all misty and obscured in the early-morning fog. I won’t turn on the stove and my audio Bible app at the same time. Even the coffee I scoop into my pourover won’t have that same exact smell, since I buy it fresh-ground from a local store. I’ll miss you, Don’s Private Reserve blend.

It’s easier to talk about missing my coffee than about missing all of my friends, but easier still to just talk about books, so let’s move on.

Before packing up our thousand-book library, I asked each family member to make a shelf of their favorites to read before the move and during the first few months when things are still in storage. You can see my two-year-old’s list here.

My six-year-old was actually the first of us to build her shelf. She needed no assistance.

• The Little Red Hen by Jerry Pinkey

• Columbus by Ingri & Edgar Parin D’Aulaire

• Poetry for Kids by Robert Frost

• Show Way by Jacqueine Woodson and Hudson Talbott

• The Real Mother Goose

• The Cat in the Hat Beginner Book Dictionary by P.D. Eastman

• Treasury for Children by James Herriot

• If You Go Down to the Woods Today by Rachel Piercey and Freya Hartas

• The Huckabuck Family by Carl Sandburg

• King Arthur: The Story of How Arthur Became King

• Animalia by Graeme Base

• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

• The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

• The Complete Book of the Flower Fairies by Cicely Mary Barker

• The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, The Great Illustrated Classics edition

• Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne

• The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

• Nature Anatomy by Julia Rothman

• Henry and the Chalk Dragon by Jennifer Trafton and Benjamin Schipper

• Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales

• Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

• The Boxcar Children: The Deserted Library Mystery

• On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder

• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Shakespeare Story by Andrew Matthews and Tony Ross

• Peterson’s First Guide to Shells

• Bug Hunt

• The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

• Swan Lake by Mark Helprin and Chris Van Allsburo

• Paul Bunyan by Steven Kellogg

• Connoisseur Kids by Jennifer L. Scott

• Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling and Jerry Pinkney

• Classic Fairy Tales by Scott Gustafson

• A Children’s Book of America by William J. Bennett

• Daisy Comes Home by Jan Brett

• Catkin by Antonia Barber and P.J. Lynch

• Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall

• Farmhouse by Sophie Blackall

• You Are Home by Evan Turk

• I Spy Treasure Hunt: A Book of Picture Riddles