The Friends of the Dallas Public Library recently started giving away copies of Read to Me by Judi Moreillon to new parents at the Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Read to Me encourages family members to read aloud to their children. It’s a nice gift to welcome a baby to the community.
You can read the January 30, Dallas Morning News story about how the Parkland Health & Hospital System has partnered with the Dallas Public Library and the Friends of the Dallas Public Library to give babies born this year a copy of Read to Me, a board book about reading to babies and children. The Dallas Morning News followed up with an editorial on February 2, congratulating the Friends of the Dallas Public Library for their efforts promoting early literacy skills that will help the children in the Dallas community.
Reading to Your Own Baby
For all the families who don’t own a copy of Read to Me, what tips can I, as a librarian, offer you about reading aloud to your children?
First of all, relax and have fun. The attention you are giving your child is making your child happy. You might think of yourself as a “bad” reader, but your child thinks you are a superstar.
Board books, those heavy cardboard books, are good for children 0-2 years of age. Board books are meant to be chewed, hugged, thrown and loved. Chewing is normal. Babies test their world with their mouths. That’s why publishers make books safe for babies to put in their mouths.
What should you read to a child? Infants and toddlers like books with photos of other babies. Your baby will probably pat the books when they like a face on the page. Infants will enjoy hearing your voice no matter what you read.
Older toddlers enjoy books about numbers, shapes, colors or ABCs. Rhyming books are a good choice too.
There is no rule that you have to read the whole book at one time. If your child gets up to run around, that’s okay. Books can be picked up and read at a later time. Or, if your child chose one of those really long stories and YOU are tired, you can just read one sentence or make up a story about the picture on the page.
Now go read a book to your baby and have fun sharing a story together.
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