Book worm Trouble Monkey

Prior to having Alby I read any parenting book I could get my hands on and spent hours slobbing on the sofa in front of such programmes as House of Tiny Tearaways and Super Nanny in hope that I’d have some clue about what to do with the tiny life about to be put in my charge. One of the key messages which came out of every book and every programme was the importance of reading to your child.  Fiction was heralded as being of equal importance to the other basics: feeding, sleeping and changing.

Now I’m not shy when it comes to reading.  When I moved away from my London Book Club I just set it up on line so as to keep in regular contact with my fellow book loving pals.  And so, this instruction was one I thought I would excel at. And in many ways I did.  From day one, bedtime involved a story. We made our way through the entire Beatrix Potter collection (turns out her artistic skills are far superior to her writing skills), the entire My Naughty Little Sister collection (if you don’t know it, buy it), Shirley Hughes, Harry Potter and whatever else came our way.  I’ve chopped and changed the bedtime routine a number of times in Alby’s short life but despite the changes I have never negotiated on the bedtime story.

The thing that gets me about those initial words of wisdom from parenting gurus of the 21^st century is why did nobody tell me how much children love books?  And I mean love.  I don’t need to encourage Alby to read, he works his way through a dozen books every day without any instruction or direction from me.  Telling you to expose your child to books is like telling you to breath each day – from my experience babies will hunt out books whether you encourage them to or not.

In the early days he was all about the Touch and Feel book.  Our bookshelves were filled with “That’s not my monster / puppy / snowman / pirate / bear / fairy / dragon...” or “This little builder / pirate / monkey / kitten...” which were a pure joy to Alby and his magic finger as he explored felt, velcro, silk, satin, wool, perforated card, sandpaper and all sorts of other materials I don’t even know the name of.   Then, we moved onto noisy books.  As if laughing in the face of my own simple childhood, The Hungry Caterpillar these days is now accompanied by a tuneful little ditty, The Wheels on the Bus with background music and that’s nothing compared to the roaring Gruffalo, tooting elf and braying donkey also on our shelves.

Today, showing yet another step forward, we are all about the lift-the-flap book.  Mark will be delighted to learn that Alby’s hands down favourite book at the moment is “Where’s Spot”.  I don’t want to dismiss the brilliance of this children’s classic but having read it five times every night for the past week, I’m sort of wishing it wasn’t so good at the moment.  In addition to “Where’s Spot” we’ve also got “Goodnight Spot” which I think daddy will find equally delightful in addition to a number of other similar books.

Lift the flap books are a natural winner for Alby combining a challenge for his magic finger with a game of Peepo on every page.  What really strikes me in this move in reading material is what a clear marker it is of how he has developed since Mark left.  When we were in Kent with friends I vividly remember seeing our friend’s little boy who is a month older than Alby, sitting happily with his parents carefully opening up each window and door to see what was underneath.  At that time I didn’t dare let Alby read such books as doing so would have simply resulted in us both being surrounded by ripped up pages.  Just one month on though and Alby squeals with delight when we opens the piano to reveal the Hippo or the wardrobe to reveal the monkey.  No ripped pages (well not many), plenty of giggles and me once again the proud mother of a clever Trouble Monkey.