Twenty-six fables, one a night, and in under a month you have read the whole alphabet with your child. It is the simplest way to use the book and the one I would recommend to anybody starting.
Here is how to do it without turning bedtime into school.
The plan
One fable. Not two, not the whole letter's worth of extras. One.
A fable takes about four minutes to read aloud with the voices. That is short enough that you can do it on a bad evening, which is the only test that matters, because a bedtime routine that only survives good evenings is not a routine.
Go in order, A to Z. I know the temptation is to skip to the ones that seem relevant, and you can, but there is something in a child knowing that tomorrow is the next letter. It gives the month a shape.
Rule one: do not announce the moral
Never open with "this is a story about why we should be patient". You have just told them the ending and turned the next four minutes into a waiting room.
The word is printed in gold on the first page. They will see it. That is enough.
Rule two: stop at the last line
Do not explain. Count to three in your head and say nothing.
Most children fill that gap themselves, and what they say is more useful than anything you had prepared. Some nights they say nothing at all and go to sleep, and that is also fine. The fable is not a test.
Rule three: let them ask the awkward question
They will ask whether the sheep were all right. They will ask whether the fox was actually wrong. One child I know spent a fortnight insisting the swan was entitled to show off.
Answer honestly and briefly, then let it go. A child who is arguing with a fable has understood it. A child who agrees with everything has usually stopped listening.
Rule four: sing it if the reading fails
Some nights the reading will not work. Somebody is overtired, somebody is angry, the four minutes are not there.
Play the song instead. There is one for every fable. A song at bedtime is not a lesser version of the story, and on the nights when nothing else is possible it keeps the routine alive, which is the whole battle.
What happens by about day nine
Something changes around the second week, and every parent who has done this reports the same thing.
The child starts using the words during the day. Usually about a sibling. Occasionally about you. That is the point at which the book has stopped being a book you read and started being a vocabulary the household shares, and there is no way to rush it. It arrives at day nine or thereabouts, and only if you did the first eight.
A warning
Do not restart on day four because you missed a night. Nobody is marking this. Pick up where you left off, or skip a letter and come back to it. A plan that has to be perfect is a plan that ends on the first difficult Tuesday.
Then what
At the end of twenty-six nights you can start again, and a five-year-old will happily hear the whole alphabet twice. Or move to the deck, which is the daytime version of the same twenty-six animals.
The storybook, the deck, the songs, the karaoke, the games and the colouring book come together for $49.95 during the launch.
Or begin tonight with nothing at all: print a colouring poster, pick the letter your child chooses, and read whatever book you already have. The routine is worth more than the book, and the routine is free.