Anything is good. Richard Scarry has some excellent books ranging from a book about bunnies to word books to books about transportation or occupations. They seem to be universally popular with the 0-5 range.

Sandra Boynton also has some excellent books. My personal favorites are Fifteen Animals, Happy Hippo Angry Duck, The Belly Button Book and Hippos Go Berserk.

Mo Willem's pigeon books are also lots of fun. As the child ages, there's the Gerald and Piggy books too.

I'm also big on exposing kids to poetry and frequently give A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson as a gift. Barnes and Noble has a series of books that are inexpensive and are by various poets including RLS, Walter Whitman, Robert Frost, Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, Lewis Carroll etc. It's called Poetry for Young People.

Shel Silverstein is another fun poet.

Some individual poems that can sometimes be found in illustrated form are The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear, Wynken Blynken and Nod and The Sugarplum Tree by Eugene Field, and The Tale of Custard the Dragon by Ogden Nash.

18 months old have very short attention span so make sure the book will rhyme be interactive and have bold pictures with bright colors. "The very hungry caterpillar" comes to mind.

Mo Willems!!!!!!!!!!!!! My 18-month old knows so many of the dramatic reactions of Piggie and Gerald. So. Many.

Todd Parr
Katherine Otashi

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anything from Pat the Bunny to War and Peace. The kid doesn't know or understand! You can read the Yellow pages and it has pictures.

At 2 months, this is great advice. At 18 months kids definitely enjoy books with pictures of babies (Helen Oxenbury comes to mind), books with rhymes (Sandra Boynton, Mother Goose), books with flaps to lift, books with pictures to label. Some kids will be put up with plot at his age, but many kids are still all about either the rhythm of the words or the pictures.

I read to my charges from birth.

Anonymous wrote:Anything from Pat the Bunny to War and Peace. The kid doesn't know or understand! You can read the Yellow pages and it has pictures.

At 2 months, this is great advice. At 18 months kids definitely enjoy books with pictures of babies (Helen Oxenbury comes to mind), books with rhymes (Sandra Boynton, Mother Goose), books with flaps to lift, books with pictures to label. Some kids will be put up with plot at his age, but many kids are still all about either the rhythm of the words or the pictures.

Anonymous wrote:Anything from Pat the Bunny to War and Peace. The kid doesn't know or understand! You can read the Yellow pages and it has pictures.

WTF? My 18 month old does all the sounds in the Sandra Boynton books once we read them a few times. And I assure you that she does not have the same reaction to black ink pictures of nothing she recognizes (i.e., the yellow pages) as she does to Eric Carle illustrations.

Sandra Boynton

Anything with colorful pictures that illustrate the plot helps the child connect better. Eric Carle and others who use vivid colors are great.

If the child hasn't been reading very much, shorter books are best first (The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle). If they have a longer attention span or sometimes like to listen while playing, longer books are great.

If the child has older siblings (preschool through mid-elementary school), I like to read chapter books, up to 20 pages at a time, during quiet time. Discussions about predictions, vocabulary and theme go over a toddler's head, but they understand that everybody reads and not all books have pictures. I love 5 Little Peppers and How They Grew, James Howe, L. M. Montgomery, etc.

Board books and cloth books that they can manipulate by themselves are wonderful. I don't allow toddlers to have anything by themselves that they can tear, but cloth books are great starting as soon as an infant shows interest, and best of all, they're washable

Eric Carle!!

Anonymous wrote:Anything from Pat the Bunny to War and Peace. The kid doesn't know or understand! You can read the Yellow pages and it has pictures.

Nonsense. Of course a 18 month old knows and understands.

Have you never read to the child before? My charge is 18 months old and I have been reading to her for about an hour a day (in smaller increments of time) since she was born.

Rhyming books build language (The Adventures of Taxi Dog, Pout Pout Fish, Good night Construction Site, Giraffes Can't Dance) while longer text stories help with comprehension (provided you talk about the book when you are finished) Corduroy, Olivia, and the series of Olivia books - Olivia Sells Cookies, etc, Madeleine, Bear Says Thanks, The Paperboy...

My charge loves books so much! We go to the library every week and the children's librarians always pull great books for her.

Anything from Pat the Bunny to War and Peace. The kid doesn't know or understand! You can read the Yellow pages and it has pictures.

Any recommendation?