Your baby needs board books!

to look at, to chew on, to explore! So many of the great classics for young children come in board book format, and they will hold up to a baby's enthusiasm better than regular books, which are better read with someone older at first.
When my older daughter was a baby,she was often fussy when I was trying to make dinner. She liked to lie on a blanket on her stomach, so sometimes I would put an array of board books all around the edge of a playpen so she could see them easily. She would very excitedly turn her head back and forth, back and forth, looking at the pictures. It would take a while for her to get tired of them, and when she began to fuss, I'd turn the pages of some of the books and she was happy again for a while.
I can't tell you often enough to give your child books to look at and hold as soon as you can. It's even better when you can hold your baby and show him the pictures and read the story or tell him about the pictures. Every word he hears is helping him develop speech and vocabulary, and looking at the pictures is stimulating as well. I remember also when my daughter was only a few months old, holding her in my lap as I looked at a catalog that had come in the mail. Somehow I realized she was avidly looking at the bright pictures too!
Besides The Very Hungry Caterpillarthere are many, many other board books. There are editions of many of the classics you would want to have anyway: Goodnight Moon Board Book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?,The Runaway Bunny,Good Night, Gorilla(kindergartners love this book!) and a myriad of others.
More about babies and reading in this article in:
The Ithaca Journal, Ithaca, NY