How To Help Your Child Learn To Read

Help foster your child's imagination, vocabulary and thirst for knowledge. Give books for birthday presents.

Here are some suggestions. These are terrific books by Australian authors.

4-6 year olds: Fiction and Non-fiction

Grandpa and Thomas and the green umbrella (Pamela Allen)

Share said the rooster (Pamela Allen)

The apple tree : and other stories (Lynley Dodd)

Slinky Malinki's Christmas crackers (Lynley Dodd)

Ella Kazoo will not brush her hair (Lee Fox)

Noises at night (Beth Raisner Glass & Susan Lubner)

Amy & Louis (Libby Gleeson)

Eight (Lyn Lee)

Roar! (Margaret Mayo)

The friends of Apple Street (Anna Pignataro)

Bobbie dazzler (Margaret Wild)

Chatterbox (Margaret Wild)

Bugs and beasts abc : an alphabet book from the National Library of Australia (Irma Gold)

Doodledum dancing (Meredith Costain with illustrations by Pamela Allen)

The owl and the pussycat (Edward Lear)

Hearing (Mary Mackill)

Seeing (Mary Mackill)

Smelling (Mary Mackill)

Tasting (Mary Mackill)

Touching (Mary Mackill)

Special animal senses (Mary Mackill)

Counting cockatoos (Stella Blackstone)

Big and small (Diane Nieker)

Heavy and light (Diane Nieker)

Tall and short (Diane Nieker)

Wide and narrow (Diane Nieker)

6-8 year olds: Fiction

Aussie Nibbles series (Vic Camberwell)

Flying feet (Krista Bell)

Tai's penguin (Raewyn Caisley)

Blast off (Margaret Clark)

The magic violin (Victor Kelleher)

The girl who fell into a book (Julia Lawrinson)

Dragonquest (Allan Baillie)

Masters of soccer (David Bedford)

Antarctic dad (Hazel Edwards)

Tashi and the stolen bus (Anna & Barbara Fienberg)

A particular cow (Mem Fox)

Josephine wants to dance (Jackie French)

Dimity Dumpty : the story of Humpty's little sister (Bob Graham)

The best pet? (Nigel Gray)

The smallest bilby and the midnight star (Nette Hilton)

Fiona the pig's big day (Leigh Hobbs)

The music tree (Catriona Hoy)

Poppy's gift (Guundie Kuchling)

The Rainbirds (David Metzenthen)

Gordon's biscuit (Kerry Millard)

Quincy and Oscar (Kerry Millard)

Platypus deep (Jill Morris)

The boy who built the boat (Ross Mueller)

Sea gem and the land of ice (Annie O'Dowd)

Home (Narelle Oliver)

Water witcher (Jan Ormerod)

The cat who wanted to go home (Jill Tomlinson)

Mr Dumby's duck (Colin Thiele)

Squeak Street series (Emily Rodda)

The lizard gang (Kirra Somerville)

The shy mala (Liliana Stafford)

The billycart ride (Bruce Atherton)

Reef superstar (Lesley Killingbeck)

6-8 year olds : Non-fiction

The Australian twelve days of Christmas (Vic Fitzroy)

Round fish square bowl (Tom Skinner)

Doodledum dancing (Meredith Costain, illustrated by Pamela Allen)

Learn fire safety with Jamie (Jillian Fitzgerald)

My feelings (Jane Pearson)

When elephants lived in the sea (Jane Goodwin & Vincent Agostino)

Wombat stew cookbook (Marcia Vaughan)