A picture book is the first book that a child encounters and opens up the possibility of learning to explore the world around him. Throughout history, picture books have developed in different ways, both in the world and in Croatia. The picture book has various functions that affect the overall development of children. One of them is the speech-language function that encourages the development of speech and the acquisition and expansion of children's vocabulary. In this final paper, the periods of children's language acquisition are described. Each child acquires language in an individual way. Children develop language first, then speech, and their acquisition is different. Language has linguistic (linguistic disciplines). Each of them is described in the paper. The acquisition of language and speech is encouraged by contemporary picture books. It appears in a tactile, sound and performance concept. Also, the paper describes and exemplifies the types of contemporary picture books. A modern picture book with its content, i.e. illustration and text, must correspond to the child's age and the child's developmental capabilities. Interactive (dialogic) reading of a picture book develops the child's vocabulary, that is, the lexical-semantic layer most successfully, and due to participation in a conversation with an adult, an emotional connection develops. An analysis of contemporary picture books shows how each of them affects the lexical-semantic speech development of preschool children.