So is memorizing the text. In the biz, those are called "preliteracy skills".

When I was little, in addition to my grandpa's now-legendary readings of Shakespeare and the New York Daily News headlines to me at the tender age of 2 (the Daily News headlines had very large letters), I had sets of little vinyl records that read books included with them. "Turn the page when you hear this sound: *chime!*" I memorized those books, and they became the source of my first sight vocabulary.

Pictures give young children the cues they need to follow the progress of stories, and to anticipate what will happen next, a vital skill in deciphering all kinds of fiction. It also acts as a memory aid, and an enticement to know what the words say about the picture. Rough woodcuts have accompanied every early printed work intended for the instruction of children, because pictures work.

Not that there's anything wrong with reading largely text works aloud to kids -- far from it! But the interaction there is very different: it's not just the listener and the book, but also the reader and the book (they watch you enjoy what you're reading), and the reader and listener to each other. That's pure magic; it makes a solitary entertainment into a social one. Your read-aloud time is more than just reading, and more than sharing the story.

As for the picture books, your girls can benefit from your just doing a simple picturewalk through the book in addition to reading its text. Later, count on it, when you aren't there, they will go for that walk themselves, tracking the story through the images they can decode now, whetting their curiosity for the meaning of the symbols they have yet to fully unlock.

It's all good, Steve. It's all good.