LittleBookMatch

What comes after board books

The step nobody labels, and the one parents ask about most.

The moment you notice

Board books are thick because they are chewed, dropped and stood on. That is their whole job, and they do it for about two years. Then one day the chewing stops, and the book that survived a year of it starts to feel like it is holding your child back.

Nothing announces this. There is no age on the back of the book that says "now try paper", and the child does not tell you either. What they do instead is show you: they start turning pages on purpose, lifting a flap to see what is under it, or sitting to the end of something instead of closing it halfway.

What actually comes next

Not a picture book, usually. The step between a board book and a story is a book that does something — a flap to lift, a texture to press, a hole to put a finger through. It rewards the thing they have just learned to do with their hands, which is why it holds their attention when a plain story does not yet.

A picture book comes after that, and it is a bigger jump than it looks: it asks a child to sit through someone else's idea from beginning to end. Plenty of two-year-olds are not there, and plenty of eighteen-month-olds are.

If it goes wrong

The commonest mistake is skipping the middle step because a child seems advanced. The book gets closed halfway, everyone concludes they do not like reading, and a book that would have worked next month gets shelved for a year.

Going back down a step costs nothing. A child who is bored of board books will still happily lift a flap, and lifting flaps is what gets them to the next one.

Books for that step

Things to lift and press, and first picture books — the two rungs either side of the gap.

These links earn us nothing. No shop pays for a place on this list. How this site makes money

Lifting flaps and pressing things

Sitting through a picture book

More guides · Find your little one’s next book