Staying away from the talking ducks and pigs

My wonderful husband and I are building a wall of bookshelves in our home. (Well, he is way more handy than I am so, he is doing most of the building; I provide the extra pair of hands as needed.) I am excited about these shelves and have started to take a look at all the books we own.

I've gotten rid of a lot of books over the years and whittled my collection down to the ones I need to keep so I still feel like a real person. My husband has also paired down his books over the last few moves. Our son, however, has a ton of books. This is by design - I want to encourage his reading. We go through them quite often to ensure that the books reflect his current reading level.

One thing I never noticed about my son's books is who plays the main protagonist. Sure, I noticed when he had an entire shelf of books that featured Batman, or when he fell in love with the Tree House series and devoted a shelf to those...but I never really considered who was narrating the story's action.

And it turns out that it might matter: Children's books that feature humans instead of animals are better able to impart their lessons. Thinking it over, I guess this makes sense: I would relate to a girl in a story more than I would relate to a talking duck.

After looking through my son's library again, I realized that I don't have much to worry about - the books that might have some sort of lesson to share in them do feature humans. And he has plenty of books featuring animals and humans that are just to entertain him and teach him that reading is fun.

And learning that reading is fun is probably the best lesson of all.

What's your child's favorite book right now? Tell me in the comments.