Best children's books for babies 0-12 months

[Yellowflowers]

Hi,

I thought I would start slowly building up a collection of baby books for when our baby is born (though I am sure we'll get lots for presents and we'll use library too).

Just wondered which your favourite books for babies have been?

Thanks

I like buying books as presents - for the newborn baby and for birthdays and Christmas. Obviously lots of children already have The Gruffalo and The Very Hungry Caterpillar etc, so just wondered which books you recommend as presents that are good but not so popular so they are unlikely to have it already. Thanks

ooops - second post was meant to be a new thread. lLease ignore the second post and I will start new thread for it.

Lots of the Ahlberg books - Peepo, Each Peach Pear Plum, Baby's Catalogue

The 'That's not my ..." series is popular for a reason

The Bright Baby series 'First Words', 'Colours', 'Animals' etc is lovely

The dreaded, mind-bendingly dull "That's Not MY..." books. All three of my dds loved them. Adored them. Went as far as collected them (as far as a 12m old can collect)

On the positive side, they are sturdy, bright, and seemingly very amusing for the small ones.

Yes, totally agree, DD loved all the Usbourne "That's not my..." series. Anything with different textures and bright pictures is good.

They also loved a set of books we got from M&S, short songs about clapping, bumping, sitting ... sounding v random but they were a strong favourite too.

Any touchy feely books - "That's not my..." or there also lots of cloth books with different textures. I would also recomend a good book of nursery rhymes as your baby will love hearing you sing from th beginning.

Thanks all for fab suggestions. Any others?

Have to agree that the 'that's not my...' books have been a big hit. DD obviously sees something in them that I don't .

She also loves the sets of little books you can get like this hungry caterpillar set. She learnt a lot of her vocabulary from these and has read them literally hundreds of times.

Also, the good quality touch and feel animal books like DK or usbourne ones.

At 14 months she's not really into story books yet (I know some babies are at this age and younger) but enjoys lifting the flaps for Dear Zoo and Oh Dear.

I have found that anything with a rhythm and rhyme have gone down well with my DS (7 months). When he was very little (I have read to him more-or-less every day since the beginning) he got quite obviously excited by these sorts of books. It's harder now - he just wants to crawl round the room - so I'm reading to myself!!!

Books we've liked on that basis have been: anything by Dr Seuss (my old favourite was Fox in Socks; my new favourite - a new discovery which I think/hope my DS will really love as he gets older, is My Many Coloured Days - a great intro to colours too!); the Duck in the Truck books; anything by Julia Donaldson; Aliens like Underpants... and things like that!!

Another hint, is that until DS could sit unaided, I would lie him on the floor for storytime, and I would lie next to him holding the book up in the air above so he could look at it/the pictures, and then read to him. He really really loved it!