Reading together: books to share with your 3-5 year-old child
You can now introduce your child to a huge variety of books - look for books with more detail and description, different styles of illustration, and more complex or fantastic plots.
- Children of this age enjoy make believe and imaginative play - they will respond well to humour, nonsense, poetry and fantasy
- Look for easy information books on their favourite subjects - dinosaurs, trucks and diggers, fire trucks
- Fairy tales and folk tales are enjoyed by this age group - just make sure you check that the language is not too difficult, as some versions of folk tales use the original texts which were not always intended for young children
- Children will often want the same story over and over again. They will memorise the story and its structure and pretend to read it
Try these:
- Alborough, Jez
-
Watch out! Big Bro's coming! - Allen, Pamela
- Cuthbert's babies
- The pear in the pear tree
- Andreae, Giles
- Pants
- Browne, Anthony
- My Dad
- Donaldson, Julia
- Chocolate mousse for greedy Goose
- The Gruffalo
- The Smartest giant in town
- Emmett, Jonathan
- No place like home
- Someone bigger
- Graham, Bob
-
Queenie the bantam - Max
- Fearnley, Jan
- Mr Wolf's Pancakes
- French, Jackie
- Too many pears
- Grindley, Sally
- Shhh!
- Inkpen, Mick
- The great pet sale
- Jones, Ursula
- The Witch's children and the Queen
- Kelly, Mij
- Where's my darling daughter?
- Krosoczka, Jarrett
- Bubble bath pirates
- Long, Melinda
- How I became a pirate
- McBratney, Sam
Guess how much I love you- Mahy, Margaret
- A summery Saturday morning
- Puttock, Simon
- Squeaky clean
- Roddie, Shen
- You're too small
- Rosen, Michael
- We're going on a bear hunt
- Vrombaut, An
- Clarabella's teeth
- Wild, Margaret
- Seven more sleeps
Some points from Baby power: give your child real learning power by Barrie Wade and Maggie Moore
Learning to read is much easier if your child:
- Has had stories regularly read to them
- Had the chance to talk about stories, pictures and what happens
- Knows is able to retell familiar stories
- Knows some nursery rhymes
- Knows how a book works (e.g. how to turn the pages, or lift the flaps if it is a flap book)
- Knows that books are fun
Book sharing helps your child
- To feel how others feel
- To extend his/her world
- To widen his/her experience
- To develop understanding of others
- To deepen understanding of self
For more help for supporting your child's learning see our learning section.
See also the booklists
- Picture book picks for a list of read aloud titles that have stood the test of time
- It's never too soon for a list of books to use with very young children