Best Books to Read to Toddlers

Why it worksEffectively wordless - a child on a swing goes higher past a giraffe, a plane and a spaceship, high-fives an alien and comes back down - so the reading is done by the pictures and one repeated word, which the toddler takes over completely by the second time.

Worth knowingAround twenty words in the whole book. If you want text at bedtime, this is not it.

Why it worksThirty-two words - one sentence, spread over the whole book - describing a hen's walk across the farmyard, while the pictures show a fox failing to catch her one mishap at a time, none of which she notices. The text and the pictures are telling completely different stories, and a two-year-old only needs the pictures.

Why it worksIt hands the last page to the child - 'What do YOU say?' - so the book ends on the toddler's line and they take it. Getting the pigs deliberately wrong ('three singing pigs say LA LA LA') is the first joke most babies understand, because they already know pigs say oink.

Worth knowingNine spreads and under a minute. You will be handed it four times in a row rather than once.

Why it worksThree animals dress correctly, the turkey puts the shirt on his head, and the whole fourth page is one word: 'Oops.' The child learns colours and clothes from the first three and gets to shout the fourth, every spread, for the entire book.

Worth knowingIt lives or dies on how you deliver 'Oops'. Read flat it is just a book about hats.

Why it worksThe flaps are wide and stiff enough for a one-year-old to grab, and each one hides a body part the child can then find on themselves - eyes under a towel, feet under a blanket - so it finishes with the baby patting their own tummy.

Worth knowingPaper flaps on a book aimed at under-ones. Expect repairs within six months however careful you are.

Why it worksOne opposite per spread with the same bald baby doing both - spaghetti is yummy, worms are yucky - and the yucky drawing is always the funnier one. A toddler has the pair after a single reading because the pictures carry the whole meaning.

Worth knowingThe jokes depend on the baby eating something disgusting, and a literal-minded toddler may take it as a suggestion.

Why it worksEvery spread pairs something the baby must not do with the version that is allowed - crayon on the wall, then crayon on paper - so it is house rules delivered as a joke rather than a telling-off. Two-year-olds shout 'no no!' at the correct page unprompted.

Worth knowingIt does hand a toddler a tidy catalogue of ideas they may not have had yet.

Why it worksIt gives you permission to be loud inside a book, which is rare - the loud pages want shouting and the quiet pages want a whisper, and switching between the two is what pins a wriggler in place for the next spread.

Worth knowingIt licenses noise. Do not make it the last book before sleep.

Why it worksThe song as a board book, with a baby modelling each body part, so it doubles as the naming book that gets a one-year-old touching their own knees. Speeding up on the final round is the part they wait for.

Worth knowingFour lines of text repeated; without the tune there is almost nothing here.

Why it worksThere are about nine lines of text in the whole book: the zookeeper says good night to each animal while the gorilla quietly unlocks every cage behind him. The child sees the joke before the man in the story does, and pointing that out is what they come back for.

Worth knowingNearly wordless, so the reading is really pointing. A child who wants a story told to them may not settle for it.

Why it worksDie-cut windows give away half the answer, so an eighteen-month-old guesses 'peek-a-moo' before the page turns and is right every single time - which at this age is the whole appeal. The last window is a mirror and it always gets them.

Worth knowingSix spreads and it is over. It earns its keep by being read six times in a row, not once.

Why it worksUnder two minutes, the sentences get shorter and the room gets darker page by page, so the book physically slows your reading voice down - it is a wind-down mechanism as much as a story. The hidden mouse on every colour spread gives a child one job before sleep.

Worth knowingDeliberately plotless. Children over four who want events usually reject it.

Why it worksIt is a bedtime routine in rhyme - bath, pyjamas, teeth - on a boat that tilts, and it ends with the animals exercising before bed, which is a joke a two-year-old finds hilarious and which lets you burn off the last of the wriggling.

Why it worksEvery spread is the same two beats - guess the animal from its crate, lift the flap, 'he was too big, I sent him back' - so a one-year-old learns how a book works, and a three-year-old learns adjectives: too tall, too grumpy, too scary.

Worth knowingFlaps tear. Buy the board edition if the child is under two.

Why it worksThe wrong animal is behind every flap and always says 'No!', so the toddler gets six small jokes and one payoff - and because Sally asks the question, the child answers it. The original lift-the-flap book and still the cleanest use of the mechanic.

Worth knowingVery short and squarely for under-threes; a four-year-old will be done with it.

Why it worksDie-cut pages build a monster's face feature by feature, then the child orders each feature away - 'GO AWAY, big green face!' - until the page is black again. It hands a frightened child the controls, which is why it is the book to reach for when the monster-under-the-bed phase starts, not the one to avoid.

Worth knowingSome two-year-olds baulk at the assembled face on the middle spread. If that happens, start at the back and read it forwards - the monster disappearing first, then appearing - and it stops being a problem.

Why it works'Hic, hic, hic' punctuates every single spread while the skeleton tries showering, brushing his teeth and carving a pumpkin, and the child supplies the hiccup every time. Ghost's cure at the end - holding up a mirror - is a genuine laugh a four-year-old can explain back to you.

Worth knowingA skeleton doing ordinary domestic chores reads as comic to most children, but a small number find a walking skeleton itself unsettling regardless of what it is doing. Show the cover first; the reaction to that is the whole answer.

Why it worksNinety-eight words. Handa carries seven fruits to her friend and one animal after another steals one behind her back, and the text never mentions the theft - the pictures do it all, so a two-year-old who cannot read is the only one in the room with the full story. They will shout at the monkey.

Why it worksIt is a square-dance call rather than a story - 'Bow to the horse, bow to the cow, twirl with the pig if you know how' - so you end up on your feet doing every instruction and the toddler copies you. That physicality is why it holds a child who will not sit for a plot.

Worth knowingNeeds reading fast and loud. Mumbled at bedtime it falls flat, and it winds children up rather than down.

Why it worksThe same engine as Dear Zoo from the same author: Buster opens a door on the farm looking for eggs, finds the wrong animal, says 'Oh dear!' So a child who has worn Dear Zoo out gets a longer version of a game whose rules they already know.

Worth knowingThe flaps are shed and coop doors and take real force to open, which is why they are the first thing to go.

Why it worksEvery stalling tactic a child has ever tried is performed by an enormous dinosaur crammed into a small bedroom, and because the text asks 'Does he...?' the child gets to answer. Under ninety seconds, which is what matters at the wrong end of a long bedtime.

Why it worksIt names the exact bedtime spiral - mama goes downstairs, the child waits, the waiting turns into panic - and the rhyme speeds up as llama escalates, so you can read the meltdown fast and the resolution slow. Children who stall at bedtime recognise themselves in it and settle.

Why it worksThe same negotiate-with-the-reader engine as the bus book, aimed at the argument you are actually having at 7pm - and the Pigeon loses to his own yawn rather than to you, which lets a stalling child watch someone else give in first. Ends the day instead of winding it up.

Why it worksThe count drops by one each time a monkey falls off, and the doctor's line - 'No more monkeys jumping on the bed!' - is the bit a two-year-old shouts before you get there. Subtraction arrives disguised as a joke about bedtime.

Worth knowingIt shows children being told off for jumping on the bed, which a fair number of toddlers read as an instruction.

Why it worksCedric demands his bedtime story again, and again, and the story inside the book gets shorter and crosser each time as his mother falls asleep mid-sentence - a child hears their own 'again!' coming out of a dragon's mouth. The book ends with a hole burned clean through the back cover, which every single child checks with a finger.

Worth knowingThe die-cut hole through the last page and board is the joke and it tears if a toddler works at it. It is not damage; it came like that.

Why it worksA granny, a child, a dog, a cat, a mouse and a flea pile onto one bed inside a single sentence that grows on every spread - then the flea bites and the whole stack unbuilds in reverse. Don Wood shifts the light from blue-grey to full daylight as it collapses, so the room visibly wakes up.