Bedtime Books for Toddlers

Why it worksCounting backwards from ten toes to one girl in bed gives the wind-down an obvious finish line, and the child can find and count the objects on each page - a job that gets quieter as the numbers get smaller. A father does the bedtime, which is still rare.

Why it worksOne rhyming couplet per animal mother and baby, all of them settling, and the metre is deliberately slow - it is almost impossible to read this book quickly, which is exactly what you need at 7pm. Ends on a human child, so the handover to sleep is explicit.

Why it worksIt is a bedtime routine in rhyme - bath, pyjamas, teeth - on a boat that tilts, and it ends with the animals exercising before bed, which is a joke a two-year-old finds hilarious and which lets you burn off the last of the wriggling.

Why it worksThe wrong animal is behind every flap and always says 'No!', so the toddler gets six small jokes and one payoff - and because Sally asks the question, the child answers it. The original lift-the-flap book and still the cleanest use of the mechanic.

Worth knowingVery short and squarely for under-threes; a four-year-old will be done with it.

Why it worksEvery spread is the same two beats - guess the animal from its crate, lift the flap, 'he was too big, I sent him back' - so a one-year-old learns how a book works, and a three-year-old learns adjectives: too tall, too grumpy, too scary.

Worth knowingFlaps tear. Buy the board edition if the child is under two.

Why it worksUnder two minutes, the sentences get shorter and the room gets darker page by page, so the book physically slows your reading voice down - it is a wind-down mechanism as much as a story. The hidden mouse on every colour spread gives a child one job before sleep.

Worth knowingDeliberately plotless. Children over four who want events usually reject it.

Why it worksIt names the exact bedtime spiral - mama goes downstairs, the child waits, the waiting turns into panic - and the rhyme speeds up as llama escalates, so you can read the meltdown fast and the resolution slow. Children who stall at bedtime recognise themselves in it and settle.

Why it worksThe die-cut holes give a toddler something to do with a finger on every page, and the Saturday binge spread is the one they turn back to - ten foods to name and count in a single picture. Days of the week and counting arrive as a side-effect of the story rather than a lesson.

Why it worksIt is a competition - each hare tries to out-measure the other's love with arms, hops and hills - so the child has something to beat rather than just a soothing sentiment, and most families end up inventing their own escalations at bedtime.

Worth knowingThe Little Nutbrown Hare always loses the contest, which a few children mind more than adults expect.

Why it worksEach truck finishes its job and goes to sleep in turn - crane, dump truck, cement mixer, excavator - so a digger-obsessed child gets five vehicles named and the book still ends with everything settling down. Solves the problem of a truck-mad toddler who will not accept a quiet bedtime book.

Why it worksA die-cut heart shrinks and grows through the pages, so the child can see and touch how big the feeling is - and each emotion is described as a body sensation ('my heart feels like a fluttering bird'), which is what a three-year-old can actually notice in themselves.

Why it worksTaylor's block tower is knocked down and every animal offers the wrong thing - shout about it, fix it, laugh it off - until the rabbit does nothing but stay. It gives a small child the language for 'I don't want to talk yet' and it is short enough to read in the middle of the upset.