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Language is the key to
increasing a child’s intelligence.
Reading to children is important because it:
 Builds a bond between parent and child.
Creates a life-long love of reading.
Helps get children reading earlier.
Nurtures the physical and physiological
development of a baby’s brain.
Lays a foundation for higher levels of
learning, as a child gets older.
Ritual, rhyme, and rhythm,
read simple books over and over.
Children love and need, repetition.
Here are some ideas for good books to read to children of different
ages:
Books for
Babies
Books for
Toddlers
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Books for Babies
The Baby’s Book of
the Body. Roger Priddy (DK Publishing Books). Full of fantastic photos of babies and
everyday objects.
Goodnight Moon. Margaret
Wise Brown (HarperCollins). Great
bedtime story. Wonderful rhymes,
imaginative story line, and delightful illustrations make this one both you
and your child will love again and again.
The Going to Bed
Book. Sandra
Boynton (Little Simon Merchandise).
Classic bedtime story about animals and their funny bedtime
practices. Check out Sandra’s other
favorites including Doggies and Moo, Baa,
LaLaLa.
Hickory, Dickory,
Dock. Moira Kemp (Simon & Schuster). Classic nursery rhyme with beautiful
illustrations.
Little Baby Books. Helen
Oxenbury (Candlewick Press). A 4-part
set: I Can, I See, I Touch, and I
Hear. These wonderful books will
engage all of your baby’s senses.
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Max’s New Suit. Rosemary
Wells (Dial Books for Young Readers).
Max, the bunny, insists on dressing himself his way. This is an amusing book for both adults
and children.
Pat the Bunny. Dorothy
Kunhardt (A Golden Book). First
published in the 1940’s, generations of babies have enjoyed it. Children will mimic what the characters in
the book do.
The Runaway Bunny. Margaret
Wise Brown (HarperCollins). A story
about a baby bunny that threatens to run away but mommy bunny always promises
to find him. Exceptionally well
illustrated.
The Touch Me Book. (A Golden
Book). Babies will touch the many
different textures in this book.
Who’s My Baby? (Covenant
Garden Books). Beautiful photos of
animals and their babies. This book
is one in a series.
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Books for Toddlers
Are You My Mother? P.D.
Eastman (Random House). A Classic
Story of separation and reunion. A
baby bird hatches and sets off to find its mother.
Brown Bear, Brown
Bear, What Do You See? Bill Martin Jr./Eric Carle (Henry Holt and
Company). A book that converts the
childhood classic game of look, look, what do you see?” into a delightful
tale.
Caps For Sale. Esphyr
Slobodkina (HarperCollins). A peddler
selling caps takes a nap and mischievous monkeys steal his caps. A classic story of suspense, anger, and
recover.
Curious George. H.A. Rey
(Houghton Mifflin Company). A
children’s book classic about an irrepressible monkey that leaves the jungles
with a man with a yellow hat. Curious
George has many adventures before he settles down happily at the zoo.
Good Night Gorilla. Peggy
Rathman (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). A small
gorilla escapes from his cage at the zoo and lets all of the other animals
out for a nighttime adventure.
Is Your Mama a
Llama? Deborah Guarino and Steven Kellogg
(Scholastic Books). A baby llama
meets all kinds of animals in his search for his mother.
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Little Gorilla. Ruth Bornstein. (Clarion Books).
A book about being loved, growing bigger, and still being loved.
Maisy Goes to Bed. Lucy
Cousins (Little Brown and Company).
Everyday activities are described.
There are tabs to lift and pull the illustrations. Kids will be fascinated with this.
Over and Over. Charlotte
Zolotow (Harper & Row). A
delicately beautiful book about a child too young to know about time. The seasons unfold and she experiences
them, leading up to her birthday and her birthday wish: that what she has experienced will happen
over and over.
Richard Scarry’s
Best First Book Ever (Random
House). Great example of the small,
detailed, complex drawings of animals and everyday objects for which Richard
Scarry is famous.
Sam Who Never
Forgets. Ever Rice (Greenwillow Books). Sam, the zookeeper, feeds all the animals
but seems to forget the elephant.
This book is about caring and being cared for.
Sitting In my Box. Dee
Lillegard (E.P. Dutton). A fanciful
story about imagination. A child
hides away in a big box that fills with fascinating animals.
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The Carrot Seed. Ruth
Krauss (Harper Festival). A boy
plants a carrot seed. Everyone doubts
it will grow; but the boy believes and his faith is rewarded.
The Little Engine
That Could. Walter Piper (Platt & Monk). All-time favorite about a pulling a train
of toys over a mountain. Children
will always remember the locomotive’s phrase, “I think I can… I think I can.”
The Snowy Day. Ezra Jack
Keats (Penguin). This award-winning book
captures and celebrates the joy of a snowy day as experienced by a young
child.
The Very Hungry
Caterpillar. Eric Carle (Philomel Books). Truly beautiful illustrations of a
caterpillar hatching, eating everything in sight, and changing into a butterfly. It is a story about growth, development,
and change.
Where The Wild
Things Are. Maurice Sendak (HarperCollins). An award-winning story for older toddlers
and pre-schoolers that talks about being bad and being good. It is about anger and forgiveness.
Who’s Peeking? Charles
Reasoner (Price Stern Sloan). A book
that plays on the idea of peek-a-boo.
Children slide open panels on the pages to find out what’s hiding
behind them. This book is one of a
series.
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