Read Your Children a Story—and Boost Their Brainpower

As I read to my son over the first two years of his life, I often wondered how he interpreted the words, the pictures, and my tone of voice. When he lay on my lap at eight weeks, gazing at a bathrobe and a sandbox in Lucy Cousins' Maisy's Colors, how did he process these images? When he chose Richard Scarry's Humperdink's Busy Day over DK Publishing's My First Body Board Book at 20 months, what attracted him to one and not the other?

Literacy experts do not understand everything about how very young children's brains interact with books, but they do know that babies and toddlers respond to different elements of the reading experience. Here's a guide into what might be going on in your little one's brain as you read Jamberry one more time.