What books do you read at bedtime?

[Seriouslysleepdeprived]

DS is 7 months & I want to introduce a book at bed time. We have the 'that's not my...' books which he loves. Trouble is he gets v overexcited by them, which is not the wind down experience I was hoping for!

do you find some books better than others?

I'm quite a bit behind you (dd only 5 weeks) but the hungry caterpillar is a lovely book, or maybe any of the Alan Alberg (sp?) which have a lovely rhyme and rhythm to them, might help lul him to sleep.

We have an Elmer the Elephant book which takes you through Elmer's day, finishing with him going to bed. Might be a good way to wind down?

We have a touch and feel pets book and say goodnight to all the pets with appropriate noises. It really has helped dd wind down at bed time and she loves it. I usually read another one before that, at the moment we have a farm animals one and a little monsters one, both of which are very popular :)

We do touchy-feely books during the day but ones he just listens to while having his bottle at night (things like Peepo, The Gruffalo or The Elephant and the Bad Baby)

Thanks for the suggestions. I think we need a non touchy feely one then. I like the idea if it going through the day & ended in sleep!

I use an old fairy tales book and DD has three little pigs and goldilocks everynight... Have done this for 6 months and she is almost 3 now.... It's consistent and signals sleep time

At that age we were reading fairy tales, but she didn't have the energy for a whole one and we'd usually just read a page. It took us a long long time to realise she didn't really like having some random words from the middle of a story read to her. One day we read her Paddington Bear at about 15 months and she wanted 'bear' every night for a week since then we read her one picture book a night. She likes Julia Donaldson, favourites have been Sharing a Shell, Snail and the Whale, and current obsession is Tiddler. She loves Paddington, Kipper is also very popular, a book called Twinkles Arthur and Puss by Judith Kerr, also Mog. All of that said, I'd keep it short at that stage. Do check out sharing a shell and some of the kipper board books if he likes animals.

Brill thanks. Will get ordering

The 'Hairy Maclary' series by Lynley Dodd have lovely pictures and more important a great rhythm when reading them. A rhythm to the text is great when you are reading to a baby IME.

Another short one if your DC has no attention span is a Maisy mouse one - I think it's called Maisy's bedtime. I often get stuff from the library to try it out before buying (though I have a real bookworm so buy a LOT of books!). No late fees for kids an they don't mind if you trash the books either.