Listening to books aloud is incredibly important for the development of vocabulary, reading comprehension, increasing attention spans, and developing imagination.
Children learn more in their first eight years than they do in the rest of their lives
"Readers are Leaders", "Rhymers are Readers". Nursery rhymes are important for phonemic awareness.
Kids who are read to before Kindergarten hear 1 million more words than their peers, leading to a one million word gap according to Ohio State.
The books I choose to read aloud are typically older. In 1945 children had an average vocabulary of around 10,000 words, in 2010, the average was 2,500 words (sources as links)
The best way this works, however, is to provide your child with the physical books to follow along with, and turn pages.