Hi everyone – thanks for checking out my blog, Toddler Teaches Writing! With a toddler at home, I read a lot of books. We are mostly still in the board book phase, but every so often a picture book becomes such a runaway winner that I can’t help but take note. This blog is about the ways that reading to my kiddo “Sam” is informing the ways I think about my own writing. I hope it helps you too!

I will eventually do deep dives on Sam’s favorite picture books and what makes them winners, but for my inaugural post, I thought I’d go overarching and write about some of the commonalities in Sam’s favorites. So, without further ado, how to appeal to my under 2 year old:

1. Pick a topic S knows (and loves)

The most surefire way to get a repeat reading request is to pick a subject S knows and loves. Examples include: animals (any kind, but especially dogs and horses), vehicles (buses, airplanes, bulldozers, and excavators preferred), and food.

Sam is constantly learning new things, and is also delighted by book subjects that enable showing off those new skills. This runs the gamut from alphabet books (ex: Chicka Chicka, Boom Boom) to pretty much anything else you can think of – if S has recently learned about it, S is excited to see it in print.

A recent winner in this regard is Andrew Larsen’s The Bagel King, which I took out of the library for my own research days after Sam tried a bagel for the first time. S was ecstatic to read about bagels, and loved pointing out the bagels in the book.

2. Have bright, active illustrations with relatable extras/background

At this stage, while the text matters, the illustrations are pretty much make or break for S’s willingness to sit through a 32 page book. Illustrations engage S best when they are bright, active, and keep it moving (ex: multiple panels on a spread or lots of action and background to engage with), and when they have “cute” main characters.

Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham’s Itty-Bitty Kitty Corn is the paradigmatic example of hitting every note here – a fluffy, adorable main character, lots of action and motion, and many active images on a single page.

Lots of our “winner” books also include additional things in the illustrations that S likes and can point out, even when not directly related to the words on the page. The Bagel King contains a full two page spread that has a dog and a bicycle, neither of which are directly related to the action, but which S loves to point out. Same goes for hats on characters and other things that enable S to use new vocabulary words to engage with the book as I’m reading it.

I have also been surprised by how much S loves end pages. They tend to have lots of different kinds of pictures, and encapsulate the main thrust of the book in one easily accessible spot, making them particularly fun places to turn to and point out main characters or key objects.

3. Use refrains

Refrains are a great way to encourage interaction and feed into the general toddler love of repetition. When we get to a refrain, I can pause and S can “read” the story. Fun, easy to say words also fit this bill – S knows when they are coming and can interject those too, or have fun repeating them after I read them.

4. Use onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is a value add to many of our repeat books, though not as broadly as I expected. If it’s an animal sound (“neigh,” “hiss,” “buzz”) it’s almost guaranteed to get interaction and a re-read request. But if it’s a somewhat random sound, the sound of something S isn’t familiar with (like a typewriter), or a “splat” type sound, it is less appealing right now.

5. Keep it short

The best books for us at this stage are ones that keep it short and active. 1-2 short, punchy sentences per page is ideal. (Really 1 sentence if you can swing it.) Anything longer and S winds up turning the page on me, or I have to make up something about the illustration rather than reading the actual text.

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I’d love to hear about the books that make the grade with the young readers in your lives. Drop them in the comments (depending on how you got here, you may need to click on the link in the post title to see the comment section), and they may make a separate blog post some day!