For the smallest book lovers of all, the three and under crowd, I love books with real photographs. My baby grandchildren, 13 months old and 8 months, are still enjoying the Global Babies books with lots of pictures of babies from around the world. There are Global Babies, Global Baby Boys, Global Baby Girls, American Babies, and Global Baby Bedtimes—all published by The Global Fund for Children. Babies love pictures of other babies, and parents can enjoy talking about the babies and showing the pictures of babies in these board books to their own babies.

What comes next? I recommend Tana Hoban’s concept books with photographs of al sort of objects and scenes that will spark conversation and questioning with your youngest pre-readers. Learn about colors, numbers, shapes, sizes, things that go, machines, position, signs, and symbols—and much more—in these lovely books illustrated with Ms. Hoban’s award-winning photographs. Most of Hoban’s books are wordless, and the ones that do have a few words are understated and leave much room for the imagination and speaking skills of a child who is looking at the books to grow and develop. You can go through these books of photographs over and over again and see something new every time.

Tana Hoban was so prolific that I can’t list all of her many, many titles for young children, but here are a few of my favorites:

• Is It Red? Is It Yellow? Is It Blue?
• Count and See
• Dig, Drill, Dump, Fill
• Over, Under, & Through
• Push, Pull, Empty, Full; A Book of Opposites
• I Read Signs
•  I Read Symbols
• Is It Rough? Is It Smooth? Is It Shiny?
• Take Another Look
• Look Again!
• Cubes, Cones, Cylinders & Spheres
• 26 Letters and 99 Cents

Any of these, and others by Tana Hoban, will enrich your preschooler’s learning experiences and will make going for a walk even more exciting and discussion-filled than it was before you encountered these concept books. I love words, but having these books of just (mostly) photographs on hand for preschool learning is a great encouragement to building that vocabulary that leads to the enjoyment of entire stories. In fact, Hoban’s books encourage you and your preschooler to tell your own stories, and that’s definitely educational and just plain fun.

And by the way, I just read that Tana Hoban was Russell Hoban’s (the Frances books and others) older sister. Talent and a love for children and children’s books runs in the family, I guess.

Tana Hoban’s books are listed in my book, Picture Book Preschool. Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase an updated, downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.