A book has a front cover.

A book has a beginning and an end.

A book has pages.

A page in a book has a top and a bottom.

You turn pages one at a time to follow story. You read a story from left to right of a page. As you read with your babt, begin to remind her about these things. Read title on cover. Talk about picture on cover. Point to place where story starts and,later, where it ends. Let your child help turn pages. When you start a new page, point to where words of story continue and keep following words by moving your finger beneath them. It takes time for a child to learn these things, but when your child does learn them, she or he has solved some of reading's mysteries.

Talk to your child, beginning at birth. Your baby needs to hear your voice. Voices from a television or radio can't take place of your voice, because they don't respond to your baby's coos and babbles.

You child needs to know that when he makes a certain sound, for example, "mamamamamama," that his mother will response--she will smile and talk back to him. The more you talk to your baby, more he will learn and more he will have to talk about as he gets older.

Everyday activities provide opportunities to talk, sometimes in detail, about what's happening around him. As you give your child a bath, for example, you might say, "First let's stick plug in drain. Now let's turn on water. Do you want your rubber duck? That's a good idea. Look, duck is yellow, just like rubber duck we saw on 'Sesame Street.'"