Books for 1 Year Olds

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 worksEach page gives the child a task with their hands - pat the fur, play peekaboo with the cloth, put a finger through mummy's ring - so it is the book that teaches a baby that books are things you do, not just look at.

Worth knowingDated in places (Daddy's scratchy face, mummy's ring) and the flimsy pages do not survive a determined toddler.

Why it worksOne texture patch per page and one sentence frame - 'That's not my dinosaur, its scales are too bumpy' - which is how a toddler picks up texture words. The mouse hides on every spread, giving them a second job once they know the words.

Worth knowingEight pages of the same sentence. Adults tire of it long before the child does.

Why it worksCounting backwards from ten toes to one girl in bed gives the wind-down an obvious finish line, and the child can find and count the objects on each page - a job that gets quieter as the numbers get smaller. A father does the bedtime, which is still rare.

Why it worksOne rhyming couplet per animal mother and baby, all of them settling, and the metre is deliberately slow - it is almost impossible to read this book quickly, which is exactly what you need at 7pm. Ends on a human child, so the handover to sleep is explicit.

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 worksFourteen board pages, a clause each, covering only what a toddler will actually see happen: the scales, the light in the ears, the stethoscope, the sticker. It is the rare doctor book a not-quite-two-year-old can hold and finish before their name is called.

Worth knowingIt shows the room, not the reasons, so it answers no actual questions and a four-year-old has outgrown it.

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 worksThe same twelve-word frame every spread, with only the animal and colour changing, and the next animal is always shown before it is named - so a barely-verbal toddler answers the question correctly and feels like a reader. This is the single best first 'I can read it myself' book in the set.

Why it worksOpposites done as dinosaurs - roar and squeak, fat and tiny, above and below - at two words a page, so a one-year-old can shout half the book. The dinner-table spread at the end is the one they stop on every time.

Worth knowingAround sixty words in total. It is squarely a toddler book and a three-year-old will exhaust it in a week.

Why it worksEach car gets a colour and a name - red caboose, orange tank car, black tender - and then the assembled train blurs into pure moving colour across several near-wordless spreads. Under a minute, and a train-obsessed two-year-old will name every car back to you.

Worth knowingThere is no story at all, just a train going past. Children who want events rather than machines are unmoved by it.