I remember some books with pictures before I could read, but they were Thomas the tank engine and Beatrix Potter ones and so had the words there as well which made me want to be able to read them. One of my favourites was the Wind in the willows as well whe it was read to me in installments as a bedtime story, particularly the first meeting of Mole and Ratty and the later return to Mole's home on a dark winter's evening.
I think that even then I was learning that the best pictures were the ones in your head.
Another early picture book for me was my father's "Railway Ribaldry" by W Heath Robinson, in which the humour was so obvious. It might have been that and going to see the Emmet Christmas railway on display in a department store in Cheltenham (about 1957/8 I think, anyone remember it?)gave me an appreciation of how cartoons could amusingly distort reality.