Now that we’re in the midst of June, I hope you’re taking some time to cool off with a good book. Since many students are home for the summer, this is a good time to find some books both parents and younger readers can both enjoy.

Here are three established series featuring anthropomorphic animals that aren’t cheesy or annoying. Instead you see some very human, very relatable, and sometimes very heartbreaking traits. Their stories make for great dinner table conversations as well as fantastic escapes for the sheer pleasure of reading:

Mouse Guard by Dave Petersen

This award-winning comic book series takes place from the point of view of the small but mighty Mouse Guard, mice who defend and protect their villages from outside predatory threats. Petersen said mice made for a great underdog, where you don’t underestimate the size of a character.

I love that although these are all ages, they don’t shy away from the emotions of the human conditions, from dealing with the death of loved ones to the intricacies peace, war, and how we perceive our allies and enemies. Sometimes, you feel cozy in the an inn as the mice exchange stories, and other times you can feel a threat lurking.

If you want to go in chronological order, they begin with the Fall 1152 book. Enter the world and you won’t want to leave.

Redwall by Brian Jacques

If you want to try a series of prose with the mice front and center, the woodland animals of Redwall Abbey in the Mossflower Woods still easy to find. Even with a similar setting you won’t get one character’s continued adventures. Each book deals with different characters. You rarely see recurring ones, except for the brave Martin the Warrior. There are definite heroes and villains with the mice, hares badgers and sorts are the brave protagonists, while the “vermin” like rats and weasels are the threat.

You also won’t see a ton of wizard-like sorcery, but there is a sort of spiritual realm and some magic. No, these aren’t metaphors for any religion, just fun aspects of the story.

Brian Jacques wrote these adventures up until his death in 2011, with the final novel in the series published just a couple of months following it. I discovered him when the first Redwall book came out in the mid 1980s, and I was already in high school.

I followed this series well into my adult life, and never grew bored.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

I feel this really needs to be included, because with the high-budget movies from the early 2000s, and what I am pretty sure will be huge butchering of the story coming up in the new adaptations, you really need to make sure you know the real story as Lewis intended.

In the Inkling authors’ circle, I considerTolkien’s books the gold standard, but there is a spark of childish fun in the way Lewis wrote these adventures of a WWII group of British kids and their journey into another realm.

The four siblings are main characters, but they can’t have adventures without their animals friends..and threats..from mice to foxes to badgers and wolves…and lions.

Even those who never cracked open the pages of his books might be familiar with Aslan the Lion, and the Snow Queen as some very Biblically inspired symbols of good vs. evil, but Lewis wrote seven of these novels in about six years’ time. His final in the series, The Last Battle, hits deep with reference of a Revelation like new world. You get a glimpse of a sort of Heaven and a promise that all we had been through was just the first chapter of a “Great Story which no one on earth had read: which goes on for ever…”

That may have been a bit of a spoiler, but getting to this end is delightful.

Escape the heat and the worries of this world by following this collection of animal characters. Easy your mind and open you imagination for the love of reading.