Like many infants and toddlers, 12-month-old Erin's primary interest in books was turning the pages. As her mother read more quickly and tried to point out the pictures on each page, Erin continued to turn the pages, paying little attention to the pictures or to the words being read. One day, when reading a board book version of the popular children's song The Wheels on the Bus (Kubler, 2001), her mother began to sing the words as she pointed to the pictures mentioned in the song. Noticing a difference, Erin listened to all of the words on the page before her mother prompted her to turn to the next page. Every page was sung and then, after the last page, Erin pushed it toward her mother, indicating she wanted to hear it again. Young children love to hear the human voice and enjoy music. Even before they are able to follow the sequence of a story, they love listening to simple songs and looking at pictures in books. Infants and toddlers like books with simple pictures and bright colors that reflect familiar things in their world. Books with a high contrast of colors and shapes and a nice mix of faces provide visual stimulation, while those with rhythmic language are perfect for young toddlers who are classifying the world and rapidly adding new words to their receptive and expressive vocabularies. Typically developing toddlers have acute hearing, and their attention is captured by the rhythmic and rhyming patterns found in virtually all song picture books. For example, young children delight in hearing "This old man, he played two. He played nick nack on my shoe. With a nick nack paddy whack, give a dog a bone. This old man came rolling home" (Adams, 2000).
