This book series has been surprisingly a big hit with my nearly four year olds. All three books have plots, a decent amount of text, some trickery and engaging illustrations. They are all about a class of naughty kids and their attempts to outsmart their teacher. The teacher always ends up outsmarting them in the end.

These days, I am on the look out for books with more text with some advanced vocabulary scattered around and a simple plot for my nearly four year old twin boys. I thought these books would be more appropriate for 5-6 year olds but my boys are proving me wrong on this assessment. I am not sure what the appeal is here for my boys but they made me read each of these books multiple times. I am guessing they are thrilled by the fact that the kids attempt to trick their teacher even though the teacher outsmarts them in the end. With each of these books, I had to explain the plot to them in my own words to help them understand what happened but it only took one try per book and they got it.

I got these book recommendations from Jim Trelease’s The Read Aloud Handbook.