Reading
Nonfiction for Preschoolers: Books About Real Things
4 min read
A significant number of children — often the ones described as not liking books — turn out to like books about real things enormously. They just weren't offered any.
Nonfiction is underused with the under-sixes, and it solves a specific problem better than any story can.
Why it works for some children
Fact books don't require you to sit through a plot to get to the good bit, and they can be entered anywhere. A child who won't sit for a story will often spend fifteen minutes on a cross-section of a digger, because every page is immediately about the thing they care about.
They also match how preschool obsessions work. When a child is deep in dinosaurs, feeding that obsession is the fastest route to a lot of reading.
It builds different vocabulary
Nonfiction brings technical and specific words that stories rarely reach for — habitat, excavate, hibernate, eruption. Children are entirely capable of absorbing precise words when they're attached to something they're interested in, and often use them with startling accuracy.
How to read it
- Don't read cover to cover. Follow what they point at, skip what they don't care about.
- Read the captions and labels — that's often where the interesting bits are.
- It's fine to say you don't know, and better to look it up together.
- Let them return to the same three pages indefinitely.
At bedtime, with a caveat
Fact books tend to generate questions, and questions generate a wide-awake child. They're excellent daytime and quiet-time reading and a risky choice for the last story of the night.
The workable compromise is the one families use for chapter books: nonfiction earlier in the routine, and a calm story last so the day still ends quietly.
Common questions
- Should preschoolers read nonfiction?
- Yes, and it's underused. Fact books can be entered at any page and feed a child's current obsession directly, which often hooks children who won't sit through a story.
- How do you read a nonfiction book to a young child?
- Don't read it cover to cover. Follow what they point at, read the captions and labels, skip freely, and let them return to the same few pages as often as they want.
- Are fact books good at bedtime?
- They tend to generate questions, which wakes children up. Read them earlier in the routine and keep a calm story for last.
Tonight's story, ready to read
Original illustrated bedtime stories for ages 2+, by a professional narrator or in your own recorded voice. Some are free — no account needed.