• For together time – babies love to hear the sound of your voice, and to sit together with a book is a wonderful bonding experience, and what may start as looking at pictures and grabbing at a board book or cloth book, will grew into story time…

• For quiet time – for a bedtime story, the perfect winding down of the day, or for anytime to sit quietly and discover a new story, or to reread favourite stories, because we all need a bit of quiet time. 

• For noisy interactive time – because reading can be noisy time too, there may be sudden noises in the story, or loud characters, each with a different voice to have fun reading. For children to anticipate and join in with the story. 

• To educate – nonfiction books give information, but fiction is equally educational, to learn how characters interact with each other, and the situations they find themselves in. Books where they will recognise others like themselves, or completely different, and learn to empathise with others. 

• To stimulate the mind and imagination – To learn to listen to a story, and anticipate what is going to happen next. To look at the pictures and let them come alive with the story. 

• To make books as accessible as toys – toys that are kept out of reach won’t get played with, and the same is true for books, early books are not going to stay pristine, and nor should they. A worn baby book is a like a favourite teddy, a bit tatty, but well loved.

• To create memories – books become part of the fabric of childhood, their characters childhood friends to be revisited again and again, stories learnt off by heart. 

• To get babies used to the feel of books – cloth books are a great starting point, and will stand up to a lot of pulling and chewing. Board books will put up valiant resistance to rough treatment, while having a good range of format, from pictures to look and point at, through to simple stories or rhymes. Some have textures to feel or flaps to lift and discover secrets held beneath, while others have whole stories, as a good transition to paper picture books. 

• To sow the seed that will grow into a reader… because reading is a lifelong journey, and it begins long before we are able to read the words on a page. To learn the joy of disappearing into a good book is magical. 

• Simply for the joy of reading, and sharing that joy with the next generation, opening up a world of possibilities, where imaginations can fly…

AMS