Very young babies and books

I love reading, and a love of reading is something that I've very keen to pass on to my children. In fact, when I found out I was pregnant, the very first thing that I bought was a copy of The Hungry Caterpillar! I collected books for the new baby as quickly as I collected vests and nappies, and I particularly loved buying the books that I enjoyed as a child and reading them again.

Of course it was a little while before Harry was old enough to appreciate Each Peach Pear Plum or Peepo, but luckily he was a very alert and interested baby, and he was looking at books when he was just a few days old.

My absolute favourite baby book was called Faces - see picture below. There are several in the series and they are often bundled together on Amazon, or else they cost about £3-4 each. They are soft books with just a few pages and a mirror on the front. Each page has a very simple picture and a few words. In the Faces book are Mummy, Daddy and Baby. On the opposite side of each is a simple black, white and coloured pattern. Night is also a lovely book with a really sweet rhyme.

We used to hang these books up over Harry's playmat or lie them next to him in his moses basket or pram, and he would lie there for a good while looking at the pictures. He would also sit on our knee and look at the pages.

As he got a bit older we moved onto the books in the "That's Not My..." series. A little pricier, but if you're not fussy about the theme then you can often find them in the sale and there are loads to choose from. The pictures are still very simple but the colours are brighter and each page has a textured section to touch. It wasn't long before Harry learned where to touch on the pages.

These books kept Harry happy until he was about a year old, then we moved onto books with more complicated pictures where we could point out the objects and begin to talk about them a bit. Now that he is three we read longer stories, and I love that he can follow a story and ask questions about what is happening.

What I find interesting though is that Mia has never been bothered about books. We looked at them with her in the same way as we did with Harry, but she wasn't engaged at all. She preferred to look at real faces talking to her rather than pictures. She also wasn't interested in looking at the patterns. I often sit her down with a book, or even better the two of them, but she just crawls off to find something else to play with.

I'll keep perservering though and making sure that I don't just give up with her, because I love reading Harry his bedtime story (even if it is often the same one...over and over again...).

Did you read books to your newborn, or is it really too early to start with books?