Ask HN: What are some great books for teaching reading to kids under 5?

"my car" by Byron Barton

Back in the day (1993!), my 3-year-old loved the delightful Living Books collection software. The interactive CD-ROMs came bundled with paperback versions of the simple books they animated, which were written by popular children's authors. A nice touch that got children interested in reading the physical books by themselves, eventually opening up the whole world of reading to them. Maybe someone's aware of whether there are apps that are today's equivalents. If you're interested, video playthroughs of the software titles are collected at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCAF301BEC1CA0D5D

Btw, if you haven't seen it, check out the book Teach Your Baby to Read. The first chapter in the free sample at Amazon gives a reason for why more children don't read at an early age ("We make the print too small"). Which helps explain why some children manage to learn to read words from commercials and TV shows (like Sesame Street!) - which often display words in big type as they are read by an announcer's clear voice - on their own long before they hit school. https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Baby-Gentle-Revolution/dp/...

Have fun!

I made a tool for this; every book in our system was recommended by a parent/author, and I've tried to zero in on the different ages. Here are the results for age 5: https://shepherd.com/bookshelf/kids?ages=29&order=newest_boo...

(You can sort and zero in a ton of different ways).

Personally, my son loved the Box Car Children (audiobook), Room on the Broom and Anything by Julia Donaldson, Where the Sidewalk Ends, the Dory Fantasmagory series (so funny), and a lot of others. Hope that helps!

There's an entire suite of educational resources based on the Curious George books, including games. https://www.curiousgeorge.com/

Thanks for asking. I have a 4 years old and it's difficult to pick books that he reads. It's either too many pictures that he simply gets without reading, or too few pictures that he loses interest quickly. He is also obsessed with mini destruction (e.g. in the story someone breaks something).

Now that we live in Quebec without knowing much French, which adds another layer of complexity: should I read French books with my half ass French, or just give up and go for English ones?

While I'm an avid reader now (and has been since young), I remember that, when I was this young, the only thing that interested me was the picture. My dad bought a collection of Disney books that summarized the animated movies with double page picture and just a bit of text. The pictures got me interested in the books, which prompted me to read the text to discover the story. My dad has a big library, but the pictures was what got me into books (and Comics a bit later). I'd add that physical books and no expectations is best.

I don't think that any special books are needed. Try to find what will be interesting for you. In my experience, just laying down and reading to the baby so the baby can look at the pictures and text. It worked great for me.

Teaching them to read? Important.

Getting them to love to read? 10x important.

As you focus on the former, don't lose sight of the latter.