I’m an English professor. I believe that a LOT of daily reading out loud to children is key to academic success. I believe that the American belief that three year olds should have books with vocabulary “suitable” for three year olds is wrong. I studied at Oxford, and my landlord read to his little girl books like “The Wind in the Willows.” It’s a wonderful book! Also “Winnie-the-Pooh.” “The Wind in the Willows” is delightful and charming for little children, but also introduces them to a large vocabulary and complex sentence structures. Even three year olds can enjoy it.
When my siblings and I were little, every night my mom read to us from a ten volume series of illustrated books by the British author Arthur S. Maxwell called “The Bible Story,” available on Amazon. The stories were wonderful, and they had a huge effect on us, both morally and intellectually. I later taught college classes in Biblical Literature, one called “The Bible as Story,” and much of what I taught was what I learned in those books. Books like this are the best path to high SAT scores,
https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Story-1...s%2C138&sr=1-1