The Reading Life

Lily owns 68 picture books. We have read 34 of them. The other half may take a while to get through. Turns out, all picture books are not created equal. Some are short, some are long. Some have bold, simple shapes while others feature lush illustrations. Some have sturdy, thick pages and others might as well be written on typing paper. In short, some are baby-friendly and others are aimed at older children. I admit, before Lily was born, I did not think about the differences in books for infants, older babies or toddlers. A book’s a book, I thought. It doesn’t matter what we read as long as we read.Well, that’s right, to a point. Newborns get the same benefit from hearing the Wall Street Journal read aloud as they do from “Goodnight, Moon.” But some reading material is better suited to the infant audience. Babies — and by babies, I mean infants between 6 months and 1 year old — prefer board books because they can grasp the pages and manipulate them. Parents prefer babies to have board books so they don’t have to worry about replacing drool-drenched books on a weekly basis. Shorter stories are also better. Lily’s attention span is about 20 seconds. Even most of the Dr. Seuss books are too long for her. I used to tease my husband for rushing through books when she was a captive audience as a newborn. Now I find myself mimicking an auctioneer every time I pick up a story longer than five sentences. Visually, babies prefer simple images with great contrast. Eric Carle’s books are great for this: white pages with one or two bright shapes. Short, bold words. Reading to a baby also takes a bit of managing expectations on the part of the parent. The goal is not to read each page in order until you reach the end of the book. The goal is to stimulate the baby and expose him or her to language. If you achieve this by talking about every detail of a single page while baby holds the book with a tenacious grasp, forbidding the turning of pages, you have done well. If you are able to read a single page before she grabs the book from your hands and shoves it in her mouth, remember, she’s still engaging with the book. At some point she will tire of the taste and show interest in plot and theme. And on the topic of plot: Just because a picture book has no plot, don’t give up on it. Books with a photo or drawing and one word per page teach babies to associate words with objects. But when story time comes around, I take a breath and try to forget all of these details. I focus on Lily and follow her lead. This is supposed to be fun, remember? And if banging the book on the coffee table is what is fun about reading today, then we’re about to make quite a racket.