A few weeks ago, my 2 year old brother climbed onto the couch with a board book tucked under his arm. He couldn't read the words yet. He could barely say most of them. It didn't matter. He rested the book on my lap and pointed straight at a bright orange fish, then a turtle, then a tiny ladybug hiding in the corner of the page that I hadn't even noticed was there.

For the next twenty minutes, his finger wandered from picture to picture, stopping wherever something caught his eye, a yellow duck, a blue balloon, a fluffy sheep, and every time he recognized something, his whole face opened up like it was the first time anyone had ever seen a duck before. I'd say the word. "Dog." He'd giggle and point at the next thing. "Tree." Bigger eyes. "Moon." We spent almost twenty minutes on three pages, not because the story was long, but because to him, every single picture was its own story, complete and astonishing on its own.

It made me wonder when I'd last looked at a book that way. Not to reach the end. Not to check a chapter off a list. Just because I was curious about what was on the next page.

Kids have this ability the rest of us lose somewhere along the way, the ability to notice what everyone else walks right past. A caterpillar isn't just a caterpillar to them; it's a future butterfly. A whale isn't the biggest animal in the ocean; it's "the giant fish that could probably swallow our whole house." They don't experience books as books so much as doors, to castles, jungles, rocket ships, oceans, to wherever foxes wear sweaters and bears drink tea and it's all, somehow, completely real.

Watching my brother, I kept thinking about something we don't say out loud enough: kids aren't just learning to read. Long before they can sound out a single word, they're learning to wonder, noticing colors they'd never clocked before, counting stars, tracing letters with a finger, making an elephant noise far louder than the moment calls for, beaming with pride the first time they recognize a word entirely on their own. Those moments last seconds. They build something that lasts years.

And then life gets loud. Emails, dishes, groceries, a hundred notifications pulling your attention somewhere else, and "can we read one more book?" starts to sound like one more thing on an already full plate. But I don't think it is. I think it might be the most important fifteen minutes of the day.

Because years from now, your child probably won't remember what happened on some random Tuesday. They won't remember what was on TV or which laundry basket needed folding. But they might remember curling up next to you while you made the elephant sound way too dramatic. They might remember laughing because you accidentally gave every character the same silly voice. They might remember turning the page before you could, because they already knew what came next by heart. Those are the memories that stick, not because they're extravagant, but because they're shared.

That's the heart of what we're doing at Peekabooks. People assume we're in the business of delivering children's books, and technically, sure. But really, we're in the business of building twenty minutes on the couch. Every box is put together with one hope: that somewhere, a kid tears it open and immediately asks, "can we read this one first?" Maybe they'll name every animal before the story even starts. Maybe they'll stop on every other page with a question that has no good answer. Maybe they'll ask for the same story every night until the corners go soft and the pages carry fingerprints from being loved that hard.

We hope they do. Books aren't meant to stay pristine on a shelf, they're meant to end up in blanket forts, stuffed in backpacks, read under the covers with a flashlight well past bedtime, dog-eared and a little worn from actually being used.

One day, those small hands won't need yours to turn the page anymore. One day they'll read on their own, and, without quite realizing when it happened, you'll find yourself missing the sound of someone shouting "look, a giraffe!" like no one in human history had ever spotted one before. Childhood doesn't leave all at once. It slips out through moments so ordinary that you don't notice they were extraordinary until they're already gone.

So read the extra story tonight. Let them stop on every page. Answer the impossible questions. Pretend you didn't see the butterfly first, so they get to be the one who found it.

Because while you're helping your kid fall in love with reading, you might just be building the memory they carry for the rest of their life, and that's the story we hope every Peekabooks box gets to be part of.