With the really young kids you could lead with One Hundred Years of Solitude. There are lots of times you're not really showing them pictures in the book—or they're too young even for that, really, can't focus their eyes well—and they just need to hear the sounds and flow of language, not to understand every word (or any words). I read mine To the Lighthouse and shit like that, it was great, I think each kid got three or four "classics" while very young. I could pare down my own to-read list while being "a good parent", LOL, felt like a cheat code.
When my oldest was less than two I used to read her research papers and random technical PDFs that I was interested in reading anyway. She enjoyed them as much as any story.
From the full paper: "Although reading with children did not change over time, rates of engagement were surprisingly low, with only 2% of participants reading with children on the average day. Overall, 21% of our sample had a child under 9 years (the age by which most can read independently) with them during the diary day. So a large majority of those with young children did not read with them."
So of people with young children, it looks like the rate is about 9.5%.
