The survey of 2,000 parents, which was commissioned by ChannelMum.com, found that The Very Hungry Caterpillar was their children's number one choice, followed by The Gruffalo and The Cat in the Hat. Rounding off the top five are We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and The BFG.Here are the top ten most-loved books:

1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar
2. The Gruffalo
3. The Cat in the Hat
4. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt
5. The BFG
6. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
7. Winnie-The-Pooh
8. Dear Zoo
9. The Harry Potter series
10. Room on the Broom

Speaking about the result, founder Siobhan Freegard, said:

"Practise makes perfect and that’s never truer than when it comes to reading. Though you may have read your child’s favourite book two hundred times and know it off by heart, it’s a price worth paying to give them the gift of words."

Recent research shows just how vital it is to share books with small children. Professors Peter Cooper and Lynne Murray, from the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading traveled to Cape Town's Khayelitsha, one of the South Africa's poorest townships, to train local mothers to share picture books with their infants. The team also trained participants in techniques such as pointing and naming things on the page. The team discovered that the attention span of the children involved in the weekly training sessions more than doubled. The methods also resulted in increased vocabulary and improved comprehension, both of which can boost the educational prospects of children in the world's poorest places.