Beginning readers' books and series

We've been very happy with Austin's kindergarten experience so far. His teacher is very nice and seems to have a good sense of his abilities.

Since he's starting to read, she gave us a list of chapter book series with pictures that he might like. I thought I'd share it here, in part because we are bound to lose the piece of paper she gave us. So, the list, with some comments:

Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey. We have some of these already. A friend of mine called them masterpieces of potty-humor. Follows two rambunctious boys through space-time and superheroics.

Something Queer... by Elizabeth Levy. Less than 50 pages each. Mystery series with lots of pictures. These look to be out of print but available used from Amazon.

Pinky and Rex by James Howe. Adventures of two good friends, a boy who loves the color pink and a girl named Rex.

Cobble Street Cousins by Cynthia Rylant. We love Rylant's Poppleton series (illustrated by family favorite Mark Teague), and also like Henry and Mudge. This is a series about 3 nine year old cousins who live together with an aunt and have various projects.

Meg Mackintosh by Lucinda Landon. Meg writes down clues in her notebook and readers follow along to solve the mystery. B/W drawings of Meg's notebook.

Dorrie by Patricia Coombs. A young witch may not do things right, but can still manage to help adult witches solve their problems. This one you probably want to go to the library for; Amazon's got some used copies but they look to be priced as collector's items.

As we read these books, I'll write up reviews.