I wasn’t 100% sure what to title this post because I don’t know what category these books actually fall into– I’m guessing maybe a few different ones? But these are the series my 4-year-old has been loving over the past 6 months or so– ours are all library copies, but I hope to stock our home library with each of these series, because they have all been so loved & will be great for continuing once he’s reading on his own one day. I think there is an overall category that considers them “buddy books” because every one contains two friends and their adventures. Links in this post will take you to bookshop.org, where you can shop via your local bookstore— I also earn a commission for any clicks or purchases.
Frog & Toad – A classic that I had never read before– we’ve listened to all 4 collections on audio in the car a lot too. There’s a couple of language things I don’t love, like “shut up” being used once or twice (mostly an issue when listening on audio, for reading aloud I would just choose another word), but overall this has been a great series that we all 3 refer back to regularly & have listened to dozens and dozens of times.
Charlie & Mouse – Maybe my favorite of this list– four short stories in each book about two brothers, Charlie & Mouse. The stories are often relatable (I laugh a lot at stuff that goes over my kids’ heads), and the adventures are entertaining for both of my boys.
Sydney & Taylor – This is a really cool series about a skunk and porcupine who are best friends and live together in a burrow in someone’s backyard. The amount of text per page is most similar to Frog and Toad but every single page has full color illustrations too & one story spans all 12 chapters.
Elephant & Piggie – I feel like we were a little bit late to get into Mo Willems because I wasn’t sure if these were age appropriate, but they are so fun & silly, and will be great for learning to read. My biggest dilemma is wondering if we want to get the individual hardcovers, or the “biggie” volumes that contain multiple stories in one book.
Fox & Chick – This series is one that easily entertains my 2.5yo and 4yo. Fox is more on the serious side & Chick is the more silly one of the duo. Each book contains 3 short stories that are loosely connected, told through a comic-book style text bubbles. We love checking out the end pages, that are always cleverly related to the stories as well. The next book comes out July 2022 and I am so excited!
We’ve also read the first Mercy Watson book and it was okay, but not one any of us were eager to read again right now. I am anxious to check out Mattew Cordell’s new series Cornbread and Poppy because we love so many of his picture books. What are we missing, or what should we check out next?
Carly Reads Here 
Oh thank you for sharing this round-up! Violet is starting to read a little on her own, and I’m always looking for early reader books like these–she’s not quite there yet but I think she’ll get there soon so I want to have some ideas! We love the Elephant and Piggie books, and Jona loved reading the Frog and Toad books when he was first reading too. Some of these are new to me though so I’ll have to check them out!
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