TO GET A CHILD AGED under 7 hooked on books may seem to be the hardest thing you’ve done. With an excellent Ultimate Book Guide for teenagers out next month from A & C Black, and the launch of www.readingzone.com, a website funded by the Arts Council, it has never been easier to find good books — though persuading a child to fall in love with them is still another matter.

Books are not toys; they are much more magical than that, they are windows into the world of story. Children who have learnt to love books are never bored — how could they be, plugged into some of the greatest entertainment of all time? Yet the gulf between being simply able to read and finding words a uniquely rich source of pleasure is vast. This is a burden — or a privilege — that has to fall on parents. By the time a child gets to school, it’s almost too late, especially if school makes the fatal association between work and reading rather than adventure and reading.

On the assumption that your child has enough vocabulary to understand words such as cat, run, mouse and rabbit, I recommend beginning with Beatrix Potter. It doesn’t matter that some of the words are difficult, or that the costumes are old-fashioned. These books are perfect for small hands and small minds. They should also be introduced to nursery rhymes, by Ian Beck, perhaps, or The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes. Rhythm and repetition are very important to children; look out for books such as The Gruffalo, Helen Craig’s This is the Bear series or Dr Seuss’s immortal Cat in the Hat, all of which are written in rhyming couplets. Let your children fall in love with language, and it will open up to them like the thorns surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

Buy, don’t borrow, any book your child enjoys because you’ll be reading it dozens of times. It will be one of the best investments you will ever make. If you build a library of 50 to 100 picture books, and read about five a day, they will feed not only the child’s vocabulary but his imagination and games.

You don’t have to buy them new — but children love newness, so don’t deprive them of shiny new copies just because you loved your battered old Puffins. And don’t turn your nose up at modern writers such as Jacqueline Wilson because you think all children’s fiction belongs in an Edwardian nursery.

Try different settings for different kinds of books. If a child is obsessed by cars or dumper trucks, read those when you’re outside; read stories about travel and adventure when you’re going on holiday. We used to read a picture book called Bunny Cakes before baking, for instance, and still read special Christmas books before Christmas. What toddlers need most from books is the idea of total security. You can’t go wrong with Jill Murphy’s elephantine Large family, Judith Kerr’s Mog books, Linley Dodd’s Hairy Maclary series or Shirley Hughes ’s Lucy and Tom books. But just a little way along the road is something a bit more thrilling.

Books such as Jez Alborough’s Where’s my Teddy? and Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea introduce children to the idea that what is big and strange may not necessarily be dangerous. The best picture books, the ones that are works of art, often have an element of danger to them.

You don’t need books to create fear — but you do need ones that help children to feel that they can survive it. Debbie Gilori’s A Lion at Bedtime, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, the Ahlbergs’ Funnybones and Jeanne Willis’s The Monster Bed are fantastic for children of 3+. Don’t confuse a lot of words with cleverness. Some of the simplest books are the most profound. Try to read with your heart, not your mind.

Read to children long after they have become confident readers — until the end of primary school, or beyond. Reading isn’t a race, and the 10-year-old who can read Jane Austen is a freak, not an idol. Don’t punish your child for learning to read by withdrawing that half-hour spent together before bedtime. But, once you have achieved that, you need to get them to make the leap into reading alone, for pleasure.

I can offer you no better advice than to follow what Sheherazade did in The Arabian Nights. Start a child off on a thrilling story, then stop at just the point when it is unbearable not to know what happens next. The two best authors for this kind of story are Joan Aiken and Philip Pullman. Later, try Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon, Eva Ibbotson’s witch stories and Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider stories, always a particular hit with boys. My own son has just discovered Kenneth Oppel’s Silverwing trilogy after devouring Airborne and Skybreaker. Look out for good illustrations. The best reprints of classic tales such as The Wizard of Oz and The Jungle Book are by Templar, partly because of their pictures.

When a child first falls in love with a book, it’s a magical moment. My son adored Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth so much that he made a kind of sling so that he could walk around reading. But to fall in love with one book is not the same as falling in love with reading. Don’t force them to read what they don’t enjoy — only adults are expected to tolerate boredom in books. A great children’s book captures a child’s attention from the first paragraph, and holds it like a vice.

There are junk books just as there is junk food, and you need to be as wary of one as of the other. But don’t deny them books or comics that feel a bit illicit, such as the Horrid Henry series, Tintin or, for 10+s, Darren Shan. It’s the subversive, rebellious child who gets most out of books, not the good, obedient one.

Apart from unconditional love, a love of reading is the single most important thing you can give as a parent. Children will know more, have more inner resources, more curiosity, more sympathy, more delight in being alive.

A great reader is someone for whom a book can become a whole world they step into, like Meggie in Cornelia Funke’s Inkspell. It is no longer a passive enjoyment but a creative act, a dialogue with the author in which you, and they, are changed and renewed.

Amanda Craig’s website, www.amandacraig.com contains recommended reading lists for children by age.

This is an edited version of a lecture given at Highgate Avenue Nursery School, London.

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