A child who has been read to when young is more likely to be a good reader herself and to be successful in school and in life.
Books also provide important lessons.
And a story doesn't need to be didactic, to have an explicitly spelled out moral, to get its point across. Even young children can relate the allegorical experiences in a story to their own situations, especially if they have learned to discuss stories from an early age. Consider some of our favorite folktales. Little kids know that Goldilocks is taking some pretty major liberties when she enters the bears' house, and the bears don't have to call in the cops and have Goldie arrested for the lesson to sink in. A new book I especially like is Sunflower Sal , written by Janet Anderson and illustrated by Elizabeth Johns.