Book recommendations for 0 – 1 year old baby

Attended baby Levin’s full month party today and chatted with his parents about the importance of starting to read to him early. There’s something about the picture above that makes it look like it’s taken by a pro camera, but it’s actually snapped with an iPhone, albeit spiced up with vignette effects from tuxpi! Told mummy M and daddy E that I’ll recommend some books to them for reading to baby Levin, so here goes …

Start with good quality board books that will withstand drool, puke, teeth marks, bits of food, gooey stuff and all. Over and above picking something that you think your child might like, you should pick something that you definitely would like. Because if your child falls in love with a book, chances are that you might have to read the same book to your child 3 – 5 times a day, many days a week for countless months until he/she finds a new favourite book. If you’re starting to compile a bookshelf for your baby from scratch, your best bet would be to start with staples from Eric Carle and Sandra Boynton. One or two box sets from Eric Carle will be able to last you till the baby is six months old, thereafter you may consider introducing a new title or two on a fortnightly basis. After you’ve exhausted the staples from these authors, you can move on and consider introducing a more varied range of authors (or books of other languages) as your baby is progressing into the 12 – 18 month old age range.

You cannot go wrong by starting with Eric Carle. His illustrations are beautiful, his language is simple, and his board books are fun for little fingers to flip. When your baby is between 0 – 6 months old, the box sets that I could recommend are Eric Carle’s Little Learning Library and All Around Us. Eric Carle’s My Very First Library and his My Very First Book series (requires some matching to be done) seem to be popular among parents too, though I’ve personally not tried reading any of them to my boys before. When your baby is between 6 – 12 months old, you can transit to reading the wordier titles like The Very Hungry Caterpillar (this is a perennial favourite and a must have for every children’s bookshelf), Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See, From Head To Toe. And if your child really likes Eric Carle to bits, you can continue reading his books through the pre-school years. Some of his books that we’ve tried and the boys liked at home so far are Draw Me A Star, The Mixed Up Chameleon and A House For Hermit Crab etc. If you want to get an idea of how the illustrations in Eric Carle’s books look like before you buy them, search for him on youtube as there are tons of clips that feature his books.

Sandra Boynton is the second author whom I would recommend. Her rhymes are short and catchy, and her books are illustrated most adorably. Moo Baa La La La, Hippos Go Berserk, One Two Three, Horns To Toes And In Between and What’s Wrong Little Pookie are all safe choices that we’ve tried and liked. Two of her more popular titles are The Going to Bed Book and Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs, and though I’ve not tried them, tons of other parents have and liked them.

Dr Seuss is the third author whom I would recommend, but it may be a bit subjective because not everybody will enjoy the sort of zany and outlandish ideas that he’s introducing in his books. I find that they are wonderful fodder for the imagination though. Some of the titles that we’ve read and liked are Mr Brown Can Moo, There’s a Wocket in my Pocket, Dr Seuss’ A B C, Ten Apples Up On Top and the Flip the Flap series. Seussville helpfully lists 28 titles that you can consider reading to your 0 – 3 year old child!

Other than the three authors above, these are the books that we’ve been reading since the boys were in the 12 – 18 months age range … Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon, Bernadette Rossetti Shustak’s I Love You Through And Through, Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, anything from Margret and H. A. Rey’s Curious George series, and anything from Lauren Child’s Charlie and Lola series. Charlie and Lola is a bit subjective. I love the scrapbook-ish look of the books and find the oh-so-very-British way that the characters speak on youtube clips rather fun to watch! KL however finds their content, or rather Lola’s behaviour, objectionable. But then again, that’s just him and the rest of us at home do like Charlie and Lola quite a lot.