Mommy Librarian's Story Time Secret #4: Build Up Your Baby Story Time Collection

First I was a children’s librarian. Then I became a mom. As I attend story times with my daughter, I have started to make a list of hints that might be helpful to story time performers and/or story time attendees. Today’s hint is for libraries: Please build up your collection of baby story time books!

I’ve been to a few baby story times now where the librarian has held up a book and announced that she borrowed it from another library system. While this is generally not a problem for me - I like learning about different books, regardless of where they come from, or whether I can check them out - I started to wonder why she is having to order so many books from outside sources.

From what I can gather, it seems like the library just doesn’t have a good number of baby-friendly picture books. They have a baby section, which includes a small selection of well-loved board books, many of which are on display in the story time room each month, but none that are big enough to be read aloud to a group. I noticed that the librarian has some big books, but not enough to use them exclusively.

More and more libraries are starting to host baby story times, which is great, but they need to have the collections to support these programs. For the titles and authors of the books I would most recommend adding to a baby story time collection, check out my post, Best of Baby Story Time: Books and its accompanying Pinterest board.