Mama in the City

Fellow blogger, and Vancouver mama, Accidental Pharmacist asked if I wanted to partake in a blog post about my top five list of book for babes. You can find her post on the same topic over here, and learn a bit about what sparked her desire to blog about reading to babies!


When Ben was a newborn the Public Health nurse came for a home visit and brought along a few of things to give us. Included among the information package was a reusable library tote from the Vancouver Public Library. Back in that moment I was so far away from thinking about books and babies and I thought it was ridiculous. I was struggling with figuring out breastfeeding and catching a few bits of sleep, so I totally smirked at the idea of going to the library for a baby.

The Public Health Nurse told me that if I brought the special bag to the library, I could get Ben's library card before his birth certificate arrived. Books for babies? Really not a concept I had given much thought to. I had read about how reading to your baby helps them learn and can help them develop and learn and how having lots of books in your house was beneficial to their ongoing growth. However, the truth was I was in first time parenting survival mode and reading books did not fit in with surviving.

As the weeks went by and we realized that we were in fact surviving, a routine started to develop and Ben was more engaged with what was going on around him. People had been giving Ben books for shower gifts and our home library collection grew and grew and soon we needed a proper book shelf to store all his books and no longer just a box.

Ben loves books and he sits and looks through them on his own, he also brings books to us and asks us to read them to him through out the day. At nearly 2 years old, he asks to bring books into his crib each night and has a routine of collecting about 5 books to bring to bed with him.

Here are our top five books from babyhood and on:

1. Where is Baby's Bellybutton? by Karen Katz. Ben really loved the collection of Karen Katz books that we have. The bright colourful pictures, the easy to turn board pages and the simple story. This was one of the first books that Ben really looked through.





2. Big Red Barn by Margaret W Brown is a hit! Ben has a love of animals and this book has been well read over the last year. As he grew, he loved to point out the animals and mimic their sounds.





3. This is an all time favourite classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. A girlfriend gave Ben this book at his baby shower when he was 6 weeks old. This book was such a hit that we used it as the theme for Ben's 1st birthday party. The book is so well loved that it is starting to slowly fall apart from being read at least 100 times.






4. Good Night Cowboy by Barbara Clack, is a book that we used to read every night as part of Ben's bedtime routine. His Arizona Aunt gave it to us as a gift and we loved the sweet story.





5. To go along with the 'give a book as a baby gift' theme is, That's Not My Train by Fiona Watt. This is part of a series of Usborne books of 'That's Not My...' , Ben loves the touchy feely books with bumpy and scratchy train parts.



Go over to Accidental Pharmacists blog and enter to win a Little Books Box Set compliments of children's book publisher Crystal. Make sure to enter before midnight of August 30th.