Reading longer chapter books to Stella, my 3-year-old daughter, has been one of the greatest pleasures of parenthood so far. Though it is difficult to hold myself back to age appropriate material at times (can a 3-year-old handle Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three? Hmmm, probably not quite yet). We finished reading My Father’s Dragon trio, which was a pleasure, with amazing illustrations, though the first book was by far my favorite. It’s told in a never explained first person — the child of the father that goes on the adventure.

It begins, “One cold rainy day when my father was a little boy, he met an old alley cat on his street. The cat was very drippy and uncomfortable so my father said, “Wouldn’t you like to come home with me?” Immediately I start to wonder why is the father not telling the story himself? How true is the story that the narrator is telling? What happened to the father? What happened the narrator? For me, it gets at the myth/legend making that we all do around our families and our family stories. Who hasn’t tried to turn their fathers into heroes by the stories that we tell about them? This narration frame brings up all sorts of complex questions that aren’t present in the later two books, which are just told in standard third person.

I love the simplicity of the first book’s ending too — no over-stretching for meaning: “But my father and the dragon knew that nothing in the world would ever make them go back to Wild Island. THE END.”

Stella is a generous reader and loved all three books.

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• books to read aloud