Kids’ Reading Corner Ideas for Small Spaces

A reading corner does not need to take over a room. Somewhere to sit, a few books they can actually reach and something interesting to look at is roughly all it takes.

I say this partly from watching my own studio slowly fill up with books, and partly from the photographs people send me once their prints have arrived. I have started noticing the same four things appearing in the corners that actually get used, so I thought I would put them somewhere more useful than my own head.

1. Mark out the space

The reading corners that work tend to be marked out somehow, even if only slightly.

It might be a small chair, a floor cushion or a rug sitting at a different angle from the rest of the carpet. None of it needs to be expensive or particularly considered. It simply needs to say, fairly clearly, that this part of the room is for sitting in.

This matters even more in a small bedroom or shared space. In a large playroom, a reading corner can drift and still feel like a reading corner. In a smaller room, without some kind of edge to it, the books have a habit of ending up back in a box under the bed.

2. Put a few book covers where they can see them

Young children often find it easier to choose a book when they can see its cover rather than only the spine. A shelf full of titles asks quite a lot of a child who has not learned to read them yet. Books can easily be forgotten simply because nothing is jogging the memory that they are there.

A single front facing shelf, or even a picture ledge holding four or five books, can do more work than a much bigger bookcase.

It also allows the corner to change without anyone having to redecorate it. A book that has been displayed for a few weeks gets swapped for something else and suddenly the whole space looks slightly different.

You do not need to put every book out at once. A small selection, changed every so often, can make familiar books feel interesting again.

3. Follow their current obsession

This is the part I probably think about most, given what I spend my days drawing.

Dinosaurs, diggers, moths, the sea, space, whatever it happens to be this month. Something on the wall that connects to it gives a child another reason to look around the corner, rather than the space being only about the books themselves.

It is part of why I draw my alphabet prints the way I do, with a real species, animal or machine behind every letter rather than something invented simply to make the alphabet work.

A child who is currently fascinated by moths can find an actual moth on the print, not a generic insect standing in for one. I think that small amount of accuracy is what encourages them to return to it and notice something new.

My alphabet prints are grouped by subject, from dinosaurs and transport to insects, wildflowers and the sea. This makes it a little easier to find something that fits whatever they are currently deep in.

Of course, it does not have to be an alphabet. It might be a map, a photograph, a postcard or a picture they made themselves. The important part is that there is something worth looking up at.

4. Let part of it be theirs

A name print. A colour they chose themselves, possibly one you would not have chosen. Something slightly wrong that they love anyway, and that you have learned not to argue with.

This may be the part people skip most often because it is the hardest one to plan. The other three are decisions a parent can make alone. This one needs the child to have had some say in it, even a very small one.

That might mean choosing which books are displayed, selecting a cushion or deciding which toy gets to sit on the shelf.

A personalised print with their name on it can also be an easy way to begin, since it is a single decision rather than an ongoing negotiation over cushion colours.

None of it needs to match

The reading corners in the photographs I receive almost never match perfectly.

There might be a rug from one place, a shelf from another and a print that was a gift sitting next to something chosen very deliberately. That is probably fine and may even be part of why the space gets used.

A reading corner that looks too finished can begin to feel as though it belongs to the room rather than to the child sitting in it.

Four small decisions, roughly. Somewhere to sit, a few book covers to see, something on the wall worth looking up at and one small part of it that is unmistakably theirs.

Download the free reading corner checklist