I still remember inhaling the classics, The Hound of the Baskervilles and Treasure Island, greatly abridged, with pictures on every other page, the summer my Dad let me read my way to a new bike. I think that may have been the only summer he "paid" me to read. I remember feeling a little guilty about the whole thing. It was fun to earn the prize, but I would have read anyway. Good books are their own reward.

Our kids seem to be cut from the same cloth. They love the library reading challenge and speed through books on their way to temporary tatoos, stickers, cheap plush toys, and entries into drawings for slip-n-slides and tickets to minor league baseball games, but they're still reading well into July, weeks after earning all the library has to give.

Their favorites at present are mysteries. Harrison is working his way through all the old Hardy Boys books and Zoe's hooked on American Girl Mysteries. What about your kids? Do they like to read? And if so, what? Does their summer reading differ from what they spend time on during the school year?

UPDATED

Thanks to all my mom friends who sent in their kids' favorite titles. Here's a partial list, some of which I've read.

• Stuart Little
• Robin Hood
• Dick and Jane
• From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
• by E.L. Konigsburg
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
• Phantom Tollbooth
• The Janitor's Boy (same author as Frindle)
• I've heard Mr. Pipes
• Misty of Chincoteague
• Henry and Ribsy
• The Magician's Nephew
• Old Yeller
• My Friend Flicka
• The World at Her Fingertips: The Story of Helen Keller
• Out of the Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille
• Shipwrecked
• A Traitor Among Us
• Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang
• The Wizard of Oz
• The Redwall Series
• Adventures of Pinochhio
• Roller Skates
• The Door in the Wall
• Darkness over Denmark
• The Mysterious Benedict Society Trilogy
• The Sign of the Beaver
• The City of Ember (four book series)