Choosing the Right Book for Your Child, Birth Through Age 5
Did you know that the process of reading which involves an understanding of stories, print and how books work, begins as early as in the first year of life? Interestingly, various paths are traced with different skills and likes emerging at different ages.
Ages 0-1:
Fascinated with pictures, especially of familiar people.
Features liked:
Sturdy books with vivid pictures
One picture per page
Elements of surprise (squeak etc.)
Tactile quality (pat, feel)
Inserts for child’s photograph
Ages 1-3:
Experiments with turning pages – forward, backward, then closing book to begin again. This activity leads to labelling.
Points to and touches pictures, providing labels themselves.
Searches for objects in pictures that are missing.
Phases with books – one week will want to be read to all the time, next week will fling a book if approached.
Some enjoy looking at pictures, some matching games, some naming, some noises pictures make.
Most popular book is the family album as they recognise people first followed by events.
End of the second year, begin to describe what is happening in pictures and in the process making connections from one page to the next.
End of second year begin to identify books by their covers.
Features liked:
Sturdy pages, easy to hold and turn
Bright, attractive, distinct, repetitive illustrations
Illustrations that attract sound effects and lend themselves to games
Stories about familiar objects (family, animals, food, cars, things around the house), everyday routines, needs, about calamities like breaking things, making a mess
Books that can be manipulated and with a tactile quality (buttons, hooks, fill ins etc)
Ages 3-5:
Enjoys being read aloud to.
Between two and three, children realise there is a connection between pages and that pictures and words tell a story. Each time a favourite book is re-read, a bit more of this realisation dawns. Thus they insist on repeating the same story over and over again.
State preference for books and request stories by name. When stories are connected to special experiences in their lives, that will be a temporary obsession as their imagination develops, children begin to enjoy stories about experiences they never had.
Read stories through pictures.
Enjoy dialogues in stories and once they understand that characters can talk at any time, they create their own dialogues.
Begin to memorize and retell favourite stories. At the initial stages, may begin with comments that connect the first few pictures and suddenly switch focus and pick up another idea. Songs too will be added.
Begin to connect print and spoken word and differentiate between text and illustrations
Make prediction about stories based on illustrations, patterns.
Features liked:
Bright, attractive illustrations
Predictable books – those that enable children to anticipate next word, line, episode
Books with patterns – repetitions based on rhymes, events, routines, sentences, words
Themes based on emotions, humour, fantasy, real life, those that address their anxieties and fears
Possibility for imaginative exploration, as in monster stories
Foolishness (silly rhyming etc), exaggerations, logical absurdity of words, storyline, characters
