A good book is precious in our house - we treasure it and look at it over and over again.  Books don’t always have to be for reading, either.   Sure we read to our kids, but they also enjoy grabbing a book off the shelf and looking at the pictures (and then leaving them in a pile on the floor. But that’s another story).  Books we read to our kids aren’t to teach our kids to read, but simply to spend some time together. We have many favourites, some which are loved for their tongue-twisting rhymes, some for their inclusion of bottoms and jokes, but most are simply for their wonderful illustrations.  And in the tradition of what goes around comes around, some of our kids favourites were our favourites when we were their age.

Books make great gifts. We choose a special ‘birthday book’ each year for our kids, something that might help them to remember certain times of their lives, or simply a book that includes a favourite of the moment.   But it doesn’t have to be all about the purchase (although we have had some lovely Saturday mornings wandering the aisles of a local bookshop) because we also love going to the library as well.  Our local library has regular story times for toddlers and school holiday events.  It’s also worth checking out your library’s website – ours gives us links to book related children’s programs online like Storyline Online, which is an initiative of the Screen Actors Guild and has videos of actors reading well loved stories.

Don’t like reading aloud?  It helps to make it fun, both for your kids and yourself – put on a funny voice, talk about the pictures.  Wonderful Australian author Mem Fox (of Possum Magic fame) has tips on reading aloud to kids, most of which involve taking the time to enjoy the moment.  We’ve also found that it helps to choose a relaxed time for reading together (bedtime is sometimes not the best choice in our house), and also to keep the stories short. 

What’s your favourite book to read together? Here are a few of ours:

-          Harry the Dirty Dog (Gene Zion)

-          Brown Bear, Brown Bear (Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle)

-          The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle)

-          Spot (Eric Hill)

-          Possum Magic (Mem Fox)

-          Rosie’s Walk (Pat Hutchins)

-          Charley Harper ABC’s

-          The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog! (Mo Willems)

-          Whatever (William Bee)

-          Mr McGee and the Biting Flea (Pamela Allen)