1001 Words on the Importance of Sharing Books with Children by Mat Tobin

'Ho Ho for the robbers

The cops and the robbers Ho Ho!'

Like Snatcher Jack’s escape tunnel running beneath the family home, those lines from the Ahlbergs’ picture book are stored deep beneath my memory’s foundations. I discovered Cops and Robbers (1978)when I was six, at my school’s Christmas fair. I spotted the book on a jumble stall, was immediately drawn to Grabber Dan, and so Mum bought it for me: for us. 

By the time we got home, it was dark, and Mum agreed to curl up on the sofa and share the story with me — not simply read to me, a distinction I want you to hold on to. I could read the pictures - Janet Ahlberg always leaves so much for us to spot - but the words were beyond my reach. That night was the first time I remember Mum reading with me. Her voice was lively and playful, Allan’s rhymes tumbled along with a musicality that matched the story’s criminal chaos, and I immediately asked for it again. And again. And again.

The story itself was wonderful - who knew grandmas and children could be criminals!? - but it was the moment: the closeness, the rhythm, the shared attention, the pointing-out of dastardly deeds on the page, that I cherished.

Decades later, I found myself replicating that ritual with my own children. I had been taught at university about the importance of reading aloud, but it was those few childhood experiences that set something in motion for me. I wanted to recreate that intimacy: the shared turning of pages, giggling together, soaking up the comfort of rhyme and rhythm. There is something profoundly bonding in reading a story with a child, and I wanted my boys to feel it as strongly as I had.

For my eldest, one of his go-to stories as a toddler was the large lift-the-flap book Meg and Mog Play Hide and Seek (2004). Even though he knew exactly what was under each flap, he relished the triumph of revealing them. His chubby fingers would lift the card, then he’d look up at me — that spark in his eyes saying I did it. He wasn’t simply observing; he was participating. As I named Meg’s friends hiding on each spread, he’d point to them, showing he was already making meaning.

My youngest found his voice — quite literally — throughThe Gruffalo (1999). Largely non-verbal for his first year, something about Donaldson’s rhyme, Scheffler’s rich spreads, and a Spot-the-dog puppet on my hand drew him in. He held Spot’s paw during early readings, then graduated to arranging soft-toy versions of the entire Gruffalo cast on our laps. Rhyme became scaffolding; repetition became confidence; story became language. Before long, he could recite the whole book, and I’d find him on his bed, ‘reading’ it to his toys. He was the teller; they were the audience.

Rewinding to my tenth Christmas, I find myself gifted a copy of Treasure Island (1883). Like that boy of six, I asked to be read to - and, this time, Dad obliged. My brother and I lay tucked up in bed as he read the opening, doing voices for every character. I had never experienced a story this way: where voice and text transported you into another time and place. Suddenly, it wasn’t just a story; it was a living, breathing world that set its sails and invited me aboard. I was hooked, line and sinker. 

It also turned out to be the only time Dad ever read to us - he was a storyteller rather than a story-reader - but that single night became an anchor point for everything I later understood about the power of reading aloud: that you can step into a story realm with someone. That reading aloud is a journey shared, deeply immersive when you find the right story and the right voice to carry you across its currents.

When I became a primary school teacher, I realised I could give that same gift to a whole class. For The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), I borrowed two clothes rails from the infant nativity store, positioned them to form a square in the reading corner, and asked the children to hang their coats there each morning. When it was time for the story, we turned off the lights, switched on a torch, and stepped through the coat-laden “wardrobe” into Narnia. Dad’s single reading had shown me the power of stepping into a story’s landscape; now I could offer that to others.

My boys are older now — one in secondary school, one in his final year of primary — but we still read aloud whenever time permits. Sometimes it feels like a chore after a long day, but the rewards are immediate, and the child in me remembers how long those memories last. Our youngest (Year 6) is devoted to Jennifer Killick’s Dread Wood (2002-) books; my eldest (Year 8) and I recently finished The Lord of the Rings (1954) and have moved on to The Hound of the Baskervilles(1902). Their tastes couldn’t be more different, yet both still want a shared voice and the comfort of those end-of-the-day moments.

Why share all this? Partly to affirm what so many already know, and partly to remind those who may have forgotten - or, like me, rarely experienced shared reading in childhood. These moments matter. They endure. They shape us. Stories are the waystones around which these memories gather, but there is so much more at play: the physical closeness; the shared attention; the excitement and the calm; the rhythm and rhyme; the voices; the repetition; the sense of entering another world side by side.

When we read to children, meaning is always accessible — even when some words are not. And when we read with children, we invite them into the text world hand in hand. It becomes a social act, a shared imaginative space rather than a one-way performance.

I don’t think there are many greater gifts we can offer the children in our care than the chance to step into a story together.

Mat Tobin

Mat’s Ten Top Tips for Reading Together

These suggestions are aimed at both teachers (of any year) and parents — applicable at home and in school.

1. Make it a ritual, not a reward.

Daily reading aloud builds language, attention, and comfort. Like any ritual — bedtime, carpet time, or post-lunch calm — regularity matters far more than duration. Even five to ten minutes creates connection and genuinely makes a difference.

2. Choose books with children, not for them.

Agency drives motivation. Research shows that when children help choose the book, they are more invested. You can guide choices by offering a small selection and letting them pick from there.

3. During those Early Years, reread favourites proudly.

Repetition strengthens vocabulary, prediction, confidence, and narrative understanding. If a child asks for We’re Going on a Bear Hunt again, that’s literacy development at work — not lack of variety.

4. “Do the voices.”

Expressive reading boosts comprehension and joy. Changing pace, volume, and character voices keeps children engaged and models fluent reading.

5. Play with rhythm, rhyme, and predictability.

Rhyme supports phonological awareness and vocabulary growth. Books like Cops and Robbers, The Gruffalo, and Peepo are intentionally crafted to nurture early language.

6. Bring the book to life through props, pauses, and prediction.

Interactive reading — pausing to look closely at pictures, asking “What do you think will happen next?” — builds comprehension and expressive language. Use pauses for pictures and for interesting words or phrases in longer texts.

7. In school: build an atmosphere.

Whether in Reception or Year 6, a designated whole-class reading space builds anticipation. Dim the lights, read in a snug corner, create rituals (like the wardrobe-coat-rack entrance) to signal: this is a special moment.

8. At home: keep books in accessible places.

Books in bedrooms, hallways, and toy baskets make reading more likely. In classrooms, displaying finished books invites children to revisit them — and sometimes “play read” them with others.

9. Let the pictures do some of the work.

Illustrations support comprehension, inference, and talk — especially for multilingual learners. Picture-walks aren’t an “extra”; they’re part of meaning-making.

10. Protect joy.

Reading aloud is about connection first, literacy second. If the experience stays positive, the literacy benefits naturally follow.

Ten Things Research Tells Us About the Benefits of Reading Aloud

1. Reading aloud builds vocabulary faster than any other home or classroom activity.

Shared reading exposes children to far more rare words than typical conversation (Trelease, 2013; Read et al., 2022).

2. Rhythm and rhyme accelerate language learning.

Predictable patterns support memory, phonological awareness, and fluency — which is why so many children can recite books like The Gruffalo long before they can decode the words on the page (Read et al., 2022).

3. Shared reading strengthens emotional bonds.

Repeated rituals create warm associations with books, shaping lifelong reading habits (Trelease, 2013; Mackenzie, 2018).

4. Interactive reading boosts comprehension and expressive language.

Dialogic approaches — pausing, questioning, predicting — lead to significant gains in vocabulary and understanding (Ceyhan & Yıldız, 2021).

5. Reading aloud reduces early literacy inequalities.

The Paris RCT (Barone et al., 2024) showed the greatest benefits for:

• children from low-education households
• bilingual families
• boys
   Effects persisted at six-month follow-up.

6. Even brief reading-aloud routines create measurable gains.

Parents who read for “only a few minutes” per day still saw significant vocabulary growth (Barone et al., 2024).

7. Shared reading supports narrative understanding and memory.

Children internalise story structure early on, which later strengthens writing and comprehension.

8. The social experience matters as much as the text.

Nordic preschool research shows that shared read-alouds foster turn-taking, collaboration, and collective meaning-making (Alatalo et al., 2023).

9. Reading aloud supports social-emotional learning.

Well-chosen read-alouds help children understand emotions, relationships, empathy, and self-regulation (Bennett et al., 2023).

10. Reading aloud models fluent, expressive, confident language.

Children learn prosody, phrasing, and the music of language — essential building blocks for later reading fluency.

Reference List: 

Alatalo, T. et al. (2024) “Read-Aloud and Writing Practices in Nordic Preschools,” Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 68(3), pp. 588–603. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2023.2175243.

Barone, C., Fougère, D. and Martel, K. (2024) “Reading Aloud to Children, Social Inequalities and Vocabulary Development: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial,” Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 17(4), pp. 746–769. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2023.2283475. 

Bennett, S. V., Gunn, A. A., Peterson, B. J., & Bellara, A. P. (2023). “Connecting to themselves and the world”: Engaging young children in read-alouds with social-emotional learning. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 25(3), 777-800. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687984231196232

Ceyhan, S. and Yildiz, M. (2021) “The Effect of Interactive Reading Aloud on Student Reading Comprehension, Reading Motivation and Reading Fluency,” International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 13(4), pp. 421–431.

Mackenzie, S. (2018) The read-aloud family : making meaningful and lasting connections with your kids. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Read, K., Rogojina, A. and Hauer-Richard, O. (2022) “Rhyme over Time: Vocabulary Learning through Daily Reading Aloud at Home with Children,” First Language, 42(3), pp. 426–447. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221079475.

Trelease, J. (2013) The read-aloud handbook. Seventh edition. New York: Penguin