Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to the library we go

If by a stroke of luck your offspring suddenly develops into a reading monster like mine, you'd realize that for the sake of sanity (yours and your husband's) it would be a good idea to introduce new books for reading time every so often. This way you don't have to keep evading your child when she demands that you read the same book to her for the nth time that day.

Good thing then that there are lots of good community libraries in Singapore. It gives us an endless supply of books to borrow for our insatiable reading monster. My husband and I have actually been library members for quite some time now. I remember we only had to pay a registration fee back then which allowed us to borrow 6 books at a time, for 3 weeks and since both of us are members, this means we can actually borrow maximum of 12 books in one go. For permanent residents the one-time registration fee is now SGD10.50. Also, if we liked any of the books we borrowed, we could renew and extend the borrowing period for another 3 weeks for free. Of course, subsequent renewals would then be for a fee.

Here's what we borrowed during our last library trip:

Books for learning shapes and colors

We carefully pre-selected books that would help our daughter learn shapes and colors. We also borrowed a couple of lift-the-flap books which she's really into these days. She particularly loved the Thomas the Tank Engine book we borrowed because it had so many flaps, 60 in total!

And this is just a sampling of the other wonderful classics available at the library. You'll find the usual suspects - Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle, Karen Katz, Sandra Boynton, Spot (Eric Hill), Clifford, Caillou, Olivia and so on.

So if you want to encourage your child's reading habit but don't want to spend tons of money on new books every month, just head on over to the library and borrow to your heart's content.