Two Tinkerbells, one Optimus Prime, one Cinderella, one Belle, one Buzz Lightyear and one Peter Pan all sat together at circle time to celebrate Halloween -- and read about their characters.

``We are reading stories according to the costume they are wearing,'' explained Lynnette Hernandez, a teacher to 4- and 5-year-olds at Little Hands On Learning in Doral. ``I'm a cowgirl.''

The child care center, 10715 NW 58th St., celebrated Halloween by having students dress up as a character of a book, then bringing the book to class to be read aloud. The annual event started when the center opened eight years ago. All age levels participate, from from 12 months to pre-K.

According to Mindy Maisel, the center's director, the goal was to promote literacy while remaining neutral to the holiday's religious significance.

``We don't involve any religion, even for Christmas or Hanukkah, but we do talk about how people celebrate their holidays all over the world,'' said Maisel. ``Any holiday with any kind of religious significance we change it because we don't want to offend anyone.''

In Hernandez's class, Disney music played in the background as she read stories about Cinderella and Peter Pan. In the middle of the story, 4-year-old Enzo Paiola interrupted her.

``I am Optimus Prime!'' Enzo said, referring to the main character of the Transformers movies and TV series, which he was dressed as.

Next door, in Mabel Del Busto's class for 3-year-olds, children read the books to each other instead.

``I am a lady bug and I brought the lady bug book,'' said Del Busto. ``We have butterflies, Sleeping Beauties, a race car driver, pirates, Spiderman, Batman and Buzz Lightyear.''

Matthew Dominguez, 3, showed his friends his Peter Pan book while dressed as the pirate Captain Hook. His father, Lazaro Dominguez, said Matthew has always loved the character and bought the costume for him as surprise.

Angie Wu, 3, a classmate of Matthew's, came dressed as Sleeping Beauty.

``She loves Beauty and the Beast, especially Sleeping Beauty,'' said Yan Shi, Angie's mother. ``She also wanted to be Snow White, but we'll do that next year.''

As a part of the Halloween experience, the children also decorated pumpkins as their favorite characters. This year, the classes created pumpkin versions of Dumbo, Elmo and Nemo from the movie Finding Nemo.

Every pumpkin is painted entirely by the children. The teachers help do anything that needs major cutting and glue guns. Then, the teachers read a story according to the character of the pumpkin.

``We want to give them the best holiday possible because these kids spend sometimes more time with us at school than at home,'' said Maisel.

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