As Carole details in her upcoming book The Baby Nurse Bible: Secrets Only a Baby Nurse Can Tell You about Having and Caring for Your Baby it’s never too early to start reading with your baby. Because your newborn will already know your voice, it will be comforting to hear you reading out loud—and holding him close as you read will be relaxing for both of you.

In addition to bonding, reading stimulates a baby’s senses, promoting positive development. When I had my son last winter, we started reading to him immediately:

Yes, right there in the hospital!

It was actually a book he’d heard before. (My husband read chapters from the original A. A. Milne Winnie-The-Pooh Library book before bed when I was pregnant.)

Keyan enjoying Are You My Mother? (Bright & Early Board Books(TM)) at 3 and a half months old.

By no means did we incorporate books into our family culture so that our son would learn to read early or one day be the smartest in his class. But listening, and interacting with words, pictures, and sounds seemed like the one of the best ways we could engage him at such an early stage.

Now, at nine months, our reading routines have changed. He no longer simply sits and listens, and interacting with books has taken on a whole new meaning: he now enjoys feeling board book bindings soften and come apart at the mercy of his four new teeth and a bit of drool. But we continue to sit down and read to him because it still bonds us and teaches him so much about the world through words and pictures.

Here are some books we recommend and why:

These two, when read a few times are easy to memorize, which ended up being a constant LIFESAVER when my son and I took hour-long car trips to my parents and he’d start to cry. I’d just recite the books in the same way we always read them at home and he was instantly soothed right there in the backseat.  Try it!

This one, as far as I know, doesn’t come as a board book but is a wonderful story,y and as always, Eric Carle’s illustrations are beautiful.

Besides being a sweet story, this book is great because the pictures are large and fairly void of small details.

-Abbey McDonald, Contributor