Frog and Toad All Year

This is another excellent beginning reader by Arnold Lobel, whose characters personify the values -- respect, caring, humor -- that all friends should share. In five well-told stories (accompanied by his trademark swamp-brown and moss-green sketches), Lobel takes his readers through a year of adventures that are not only instantly identifiable but also heartwarming and inspiring.

Kids will enjoy the vocabulary, which is easy to read but not overly simple. They can relate to the amphibious characters' human qualities. Sometimes Frog and Toad try to do the right thing (such as when Toad buys ice-cream cones for Frog and himself to counteract the heat of a summer day) and their good intentions turn out all wrong (the chocolate ice cream melts all over Toad, who then, looking like an "ice-cream monster," scares the forest creatures -- including Frog).