As an aspiring children's book illustrator (there, I said it, secrets out!) I love to peruse the children's book section and am awed by the range of ideas, fantastic characters and wonderful messages that you see available now. I consider this good small business research as well as good for the soul.
Luckily I seem to have passed this on to little Q and we will happily spend most Friday afternoons in the library looking through the books on offer and choosing our reading material for the week.
This week we struck lucky and found a book I've been eyeing online for a while, I have loved this author ever since I went to a talk by her at the Brighton Festival many (many) years ago and bought a copy of her first book 'Wolves' (that I got signed - eep!) . We actually found two of her books this week but I'm going to just write about 'Orange, Pear, Apple, Bear' because this is the one little Q has gravitated towards the most.
This book is great for simple child led interaction, little Q knows what an Orange, Pear, Apple and Bear is so can 'read' you the story simply by pointing at the right pictures in the right order and getting her to say what it is. She loves this interaction and loves reading the book to herself too.
I cant get over how lucky I am that she is so into books, to be honest though me and my husband read with her a lot! Some of my favourite photos of her as a 12 week old (below) are her looking at one of those black and white pattern books and being so absorbed! She couldn't get enough of it!
We have read stories every night since she was about 11 months old, and now we are up to a 'long' one and 'short' one and she now takes great delight in choosing which book she wants to read that night. A long story is a 3-5 minute to read book and a shorter one is more like 2 mins.
Orange, Pear , Apple, Bear is definitely a short story when I read it but if little Q is in charge then it becomes a longer story, especially when she embellishes the ending with outrage that the bear has (spoiler!) eaten Daddy's apple - I have no idea why it's daddy's apple, the minds of 2 year olds are interesting!
#emilygravett #orangepearapplebear #toddlerreading #encouragingreading #childrensbooks #childrensillustrations #parenting #storytime #books #eveningroutine
If you've liked what I've shared you can get the book here:
but please do come back and let me know what you and most importantly your little one's think!