Summer reading season is here, and if your to-be-read pile is full of dense thrillers and self-help titles, consider making some room for the books you loved as a kid.

Children’s books hit differently when you’re an adult. You carry more weight now, you’ve lived through more, and the stories that felt like simple adventure or friendship actually speak to something much deeper when you return to them. Scary Mommy’s roundup of children’s books worth re-reading makes a case that summer is the exact right season to pick them back up, and honestly, it’s hard to argue.

Three titles in particular stand out as perfect reads for suburban families this summer. Each one works as a solo read for parents looking for a quiet hour on the porch, and each one holds up beautifully as a family read-aloud.

Sandra Cisneros published “The House on Mango Street” in 1984, and the book has stayed in print ever since because the story of Esperanza Cordero doesn’t age. Esperanza is a Chicana girl growing up in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago, navigating puberty, friendship, racism, domestic violence, and the slow, complicated process of figuring out who she is. She’s 12. The book is short, written in spare, poetic vignettes, and you can get through it in a single long afternoon on the back porch. It’s the kind of read that leaves you quieter than when you started. Your older kids, especially middle schoolers, might be ready to read it alongside you and talk about it over dinner.

“The Watsons Go to Birmingham” by Christopher Paul Curtis follows the Watson family, five African Americans living in Flint, Michigan, as they travel south to Birmingham in 1963. Kenny, the middle child, narrates. The family trip starts as a way to get the oldest kid, Byron, out of trouble by leaving him with their grandmother. What happens next connects the family directly to the Civil Rights Movement in a way that is impossible to forget. Curtis wrote the book with warmth and humor, which makes the historical weight land even harder. It’s an excellent read for any family that wants history to feel real rather than like a textbook assignment. The American Library Association has recognized it repeatedly, and classrooms across the country have used it for decades.

Kate DiCamillo’s “Because of Winn-Dixie” is the third one worth pulling off the shelf. DiCamillo writes children’s literature the way a few people write truly good short stories, with economy and emotional precision. The book follows Opal, a lonely girl who adopts a big, ugly, grinning dog and watches her small town open up around her because of it. Friendship, grief, forgiveness. These themes don’t require a child’s brain to appreciate. They require a human one.

Here’s the thing about reading children’s books as adults. It’s fast. Most of these novels clock in under 200 pages. You’re not committing to a 600-page saga. You’re spending three or four hours total on something that will actually make you feel good when you finish it, which is not a guarantee you get from a lot of adult fiction right now.

For families, the read-aloud possibilities are real. Kids who are seven or eight years old can follow “Because of Winn-Dixie” easily if a parent reads it aloud. The Watsons can work with kids ten and up. Cisneros is better for teens and the adults who want to discuss it with them. The Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is a solid resource for finding reading level guides and discussion questions if you want to build a little family book club around any of these.

Don’t overthink it. Pack one of these in your bag for a weekend trip, or keep it on the nightstand for the nights you want to read something that doesn’t leave you stressed. Buy a used copy at your local library sale or grab it from the kids’ section. These books aren’t hiding. They’ve been sitting there the whole time, waiting for you to remember them.