In response to my toy organization posts, I’m often asked how many books should be out and available to a child at one time. This topic is touchy and tends to get people heated. No one, especially therapists and educators, like to think about limiting books. It seems too much like limiting learning. In this post I certainly don’t want to ruffle any feathers, because I truly love books myself, but I do encourage you to consider the number of books that is right for your child and family. After all, there can be too many books available at one time, and there are good books and bad, as they relate to your child specifically.
Here are two quick things to ask yourself about your child’s home library…
1) What if we owned fewer books?
We could take full advantage of the public library. Because, why buy, when you can check out? While it’s wonderful to own books and begin a special collection, visiting the public library is a great routine for any child and the shelves there have so much to offer. You can easily stock up on books all about one idea or a theme in order to really immerse your child in a particular subject. You can also test out books from the library, and buy only what you already know you and your child love.
We could easily share our values with our child. If you are going to spend time and money to build a book collection, isn’t it important that those books teach your child what you think are important lessons? With a special collection, it’s easy to ensure you include themes related to a sense of humor, strong characters, spirituality, friendship, believing in one’s self, or whatever is most important to your family. Plus, you can begin to instill a value of minimalism. I think we often overwhelm our children with too many things and too much information. With some carefully chosen gems, you’ll be sure that your core messages aren’t lost in all the noise and that your values show through.
2. What if we rotated the books that are out on the shelf?
We could provide deeper learning experiences. Remember the Fill The Page Theory? With fewer books available at once, your child will have more repetition of vocabulary and concepts and will benefit from deeper experiences with each book. Your child will begin to internalize the stories, get familiar with the characters, and integrate the ideas with their own life experience. They’ll have opportunities to read and re-read, act out the story lines in pretend play, and even create related art projects. Rotating books allows your child to take time with each story to truly learn something meaningful.
We could make sure our child is engaged in books that are relevant right now. Why not take into consideration your child’s age, developmental level, and interests when picking what you put out? All of the books you will want to keep for your child over time aren’t necessarily relevant at this moment in time. It’s important to filter out books that are too easy or too complex to make sure you target your child’s level of language skills, attention span, and story complexity. Plus, it’s great to put out some books about the moon and stars if your child is into space travel so that you can help her see that books are exciting and fun.
Once you’re ready to create the best bookshelf for your child, here’s what to do…
1) Filter out the junk.
One book may be a jewel for one child and junk for another child. Get rid of whatever isn’t special to your child’s particular collection.
2) Make your sets.
Depending on the age, language level, and attention span of your child the right number of books to leave in an “out rotation” will vary. For young children it may be 5-10, and for older children it may be 10-20. Keep in mind that while it’s important to only leave out what is relevant to your child currently, what your child can handle when exploring solo may be different than what your child may enjoy during a special shared reading. Often I recommend making sure you have two types of books in each set. Half of each set should be of simpler books that are good for solo exploration. The other half of each set is of more complex books that will be great for shared reading, where you can use your great storytelling skills to keep your child engaged.
Tell me! Could you ever consider limiting the number of your child’s books? What children’s book do you think should be in every collection? What is the right number of books out and available for your child?
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Personally, I leave all books but holiday ones out. My kids go through phases of what they want and I don’t want to have to dig to get them. We have well over 800 kid books, with more on the way now from our school scholastic order. I have a basket for th eboard books, I have a shelf of the handmade fabric books that my mom stitched for them. We have a shelf of my old kid books. Each child has several shelves in there room of books on their level and ones that were gifts for just them. In the livingroom we have many shelves of books that are for all the kids. My youngest started to read Dick and Jane yesterday. She’s flying through the short first stories in it. Soon she will be flying through step 1, 2, 3 books and into Chapter books. My son is very into rereading his chapter books. Magic Treehouse, Box Car Children, Nate teh Great, Captain Underpants… and then he goes back to picture books, Froggy, Dr. Seuss, Clifford and all of the different “There was an old lady…” .
We do not have a pubic library so I do the best I can with exposing them to all kinds of books, fiction, non-fiction and bios. For every holiday they get a box of books. Someday i may run out of shelves but there’s always IKEA not far away to get new ones.
Sorry for the typos, It’s late here and the kids won’t stay in bed.
Sheila-
It sounds like your kids are naturally kind of rotating themselves and can handle a bigger library. They are selecting what their into at a particular time and sound like pretty established readers. That is wonderful and what every parent hopes for!
It still may be fun to have a section of your bookshelf sectioned off where you rotate books on a particular subject, theme, or concept. I bet it would be exciting for them to discover how those books are all related and explore them as a collection. Happy reading!
Kim, this is so important. Thank you for bringing up the topic of fewer books as it relates to learning. I too know that it is a touchy subject. So many parents equate a big library with a big mind.
Our son has had some challenges with speech and is a bit delayed compared to his peers. A while back I removed all the big books that are not age appropriate yet and we currently have about 8-10 books that he can easily access. He really knows this books and in the last two months has grown with them. He can identify actions in the book, likes to talk about them, and has names for the books. It’s been a wonderful thing to see!
I get so excited when we read a book together in bed and I ask him if he would like to read another, and he says yes, and names the book he wants. He has actions and words that he plays out as we read the stories.
We do have one big book out and available for him that he likes to read on his own. It’s one of those Richard Scary books with animals and vehicles and such. It really grabs his attention and he likes to sit and flip through the pages and yell out to me what’s in the book. It is very much his reading time and he prefers to do it on his own or to read to us.
PS. Libraries: I feel like we’ve just hit the age of being able to take out a few books each week and not damage them (almost 3). We go to a wonderful story time at our family library once a week and then select 2-3 books to take home.
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Rachel, I love that he is showing you how his pages are filled with his familiar books! That is so much fun and exciting to hear. We love our story time too. One idea for kids not quite ready to care for library books is to keep those out of reach and save those in the half of your sets that are for shared reading only. Then you know it’s supervised interaction with those books only.
We try to rotate books on the shelves to suit what my kids want to read or might be interested. All other books are in the storeroom out of sight, We have about 300 books- some bought, others hand me downs.
It is hard to find books in the library, No matter what the library computer system says about its books, most of the time we can’t find it on the shelf. So getting books from Library is really just how lucky you are to get a book that might suit the kids.
So for the classics like The very Hungry Caterpillar and Goodnight Moon; I tend to just pick it up whenever I see them at the 2nd hand book shop. I cannot afford new books at local bookshop and besides they just don’t carry the really good books.
Sounds like you have a great system. We’ve had the luck of finding the most amazing children’s librarian. We can tell her what we’re in the mood for, ask her for a favorite pick, or request a certain subject area and she always comes up with a great story!
This is a wonderful post. I have often wondered if I should limit the books out. Both my boys (ages 3 &5) have small book racks in their rooms. The oldest one (who is mildly autistic) gets stuck on the same book for weeks, obsesses over it, but we will do the same with toys, movies, ect. The youngest LOVES books so today my question is based on the youngest one. He likes books he knows because he can “read them” when he is in bed alone. However, I like to introduce new books one at a time by swapping a book. The problem is he gets frustrated that he doesn’t know it so he “can’t read it” so he will get up and put it back in the hallway and cry for his other book. Should I change how I introduce the new book by only bringing it in with me to read to him and taking it out with me until he knows it well enough that he “can read it” or should I leave it in there and let him explore it on his own slowly? Thanks again for this post!!!!
Books that we enjoy: Good Night Gorilla, The Gruffalo and Gruffalo’s Child (5 yr. old favorite and teaches imagination) and How does a Dinasour eat his food (3 yr. old favorite, hoping it will help with his very picky eating habits).
Lacy-
Great question. And yes! In your case it sounds like it would be great to keep the books that are for solo exploration in his room and available. Then keep the others that are for shared reading in a basket or bin that you can bring in and read together. Once he’s familiar with one or two, you could slip them onto his shelf. Please let me know how it goes.
I can’t think of a post that was more “meant to be” for me to read today than this!! My children have a TON of books and I am constantly organizing them. Some or not great some are fabulous. I’ve always wanted to weed-out the collection but I feel weird about getting rid of any books. This helps me so much and guess what I will be doing tomorrow!!
Thank you! I am pinning this!
I’m so glad, Caroline! I know it can feel weird getting rid of books, but they may be great for another child. Please keep me posted how it goes and I’d love some before and after pictures.
Recently I went through my girls books and reduced their collection to 20 downstairs and 15 upstairs. I’m not sure the girls noticed, but they have been reading more, like the limited number made reading more appealing.
This is one thing that I do (still not got a hold of the toy rotation) but the book rotation is done on a weekly basis. We have a general selection of board books that both children are able to read around 7 that are in the lounge where we play. But I also have a book box (you can see the one that I made for J on my blog) and in that I put our weeks books, some seasonal, some on topics that he’s interested in, ones that he has chosen from the library and that box comes with us where ever we go – it fits in the footwell of the car, can be carried up stairs and downstairs. All books are accessible in his bedroom and each week we choose 3 books to go in the box and exchange for the 3 that he choose himself. T has her own box as well but that is mainly bedtime books as she loves to read the board books.
I will not say how many books we actually have at home – but completly agree that it’s how many you have in circulation that is vital to fill up those pages and also to encourage readers from an early age.
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This post is so fabulous! I find that with fewer toys and books those that are available actually get used much more. I am on a major fall organizing spree and I plan to use this as a guide to tackle the book shelves (yikes, I’ve got some work to do!)
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There isn’t a set number of books that works for our house. We have books everywhere! In the bedroom. In the sunroom. In the living room. On the floor! It’s good to have readers, four of them, in this house!
But I do think it’s important to be selective and use the libraries. Libraries let us preview new books, decide which we’d like to add to our collection, and also let us delve deep into subjects that may not hold our little one’s interest forever. Animals, dinosaurs, you name it!
Forgot to say my favorite children’s book. I love love love the book right now. Which is good, since I read it precisely twelve million times a day.
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We have found that our boys forget about certain books because of the sheer volume of books on the shelves. I recently purchased a library cart from Land of Nod, and we use that to display our library books. If we haven’t gone to the library that week, it’s a good place to put a few books from our shelves that have been forgotten about – it’s like discovering new books! I think that rotating books can be very helpful to keep interest up.
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I really struggle with organizational skills, so I only separate my kids books into two groups and every now and then switch them out. They mostly read the library books we pick out anyway. I think you are completely right that too many books overwhelms children.
I’ve noticed that the main books that my kids return to over and over again are their nicer anthologies and large picture books. They have a couple storybook bibles too that they never seem to get tired of looking at.
Thanks for another great post, Kim! I always love reading your organizational posts. : )
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I got my sons books down to about 20 at one point. Then he found the box and eventually had them all back on his bookshelf. I just went through it again last month and tried to narrow it down.
I agree that in the case of books less can be more. So I keep trying.
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My daughter’s collection often sneaks up to a higher number, but you’re right, that just means it’s time to revisit, pair down, and rotate.