Infants Books

I liked Baby 411 and like this for same reasons -- simple clear advice -- what to do in certain medical situations, when to call the doctor, when to worry about your child's development, when to relax because all toddlers do "that" and general toddler advice. My friend whose wife is a pediatrician is a big fan of these books too because they set good guidelines for parents about when to call the dr -- differentiating between call in the night emergencies and call during office hours. As a first step before calling the doctor, I would rather consult this than google symptoms.

I initially purchased Baby 411 on the recommendation of a friend who is also a mid-wife. When my son hit 12 months, I graduated to Toddler 411. Again, another well-written & well-researched but fun-to-read book.

My favorite part about this series is that when I have what I suppose is an unusual question and think to myself, "This probably won't be in there, but I'll look anyway..." voila! It's there. It's like these authors are reading my mind. Great work.

Kristin Delfau, EA
The Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time
coming January 2009 from Aji Publishing

I have the Baby 411 book and love it so I wanted Toddler 411 once my daughter grew out of the baby book. I think their books are informative and helpful. Highly recommend!

This book, just like babies 411, is very easy to read and finding answers to your burning questions is not a problem. Love the was it's written, these laddies approach all problems with a good attitude and a sense of humor. I highly recommend it.

had high expectantions after baby 411 and I am not disappointed at all. Easy to understand, lots of relevant information, all of it important at one point or another in our childs progress.

If you want to get an idea of how it is to be in africa this is a great book.

Athol Fugard is a brilliant writer and commented on the evils of apartheid for many years through his plays. This novel is heart-breaking as it describes the terror of a child left alone to fend for himself in a large city in Africa with no welfare services.

The child has no choice but to become part of a gang of other street kids and they survive only by criminal behaviour. This story is dark and tragic and very well told. The saddest thing is that this is the story of many young criminals throughout the world and that our society allows this to happen over and over again.

This remarkable short novel sat in the author's files for years before it was published, as Fugard wondered if it was good enough. It recently gained attention as the film adaptation won the 2005 Academy Award for best foreign language film. Like Rohinton Mistry, Fugard focuses on the underclass in his adopted home of South Africa, but unlike Mistry, the boundaries of his world stop there. Violence, redemption and fate all take turns in this story of a young thug's rediscovery of his past and development of his future. A harrowing, yet somehow very satisfying read.

In a razzia by the South-African police looking for illegal immigrants, the main character of this book, a 10 year old, looses 'the big, gentle, warm, protective mother behind whom he had hidden and escaped from the whole world of a child's fear.'
From now on, he stays defenseless in a strange labyrinth of laws, 'loneliness, being the only person in the world ... He learnt the lesson of hunger ... He learnt to watch for the weakness of sympathy or compassion for others weaker than yourself, like discovering how never to feel the pain you inflicted. He had no use for memories ... There was only the present, that continuous moment carrying him forward without question of regret.'
He becomes a tsotsi, a wild, brutally killing animal, always looking around for easy targets (the painted and the cripple): 'There was no conflict. It wasn't a question of should I, or shouldn't I. He was resigned to the inevitable, watching it unfold as doctors would the last stages of a disease in a patient who is beyond help.'

But one day, his wild mind is shaken when he meets a woman with a child. He is confronted with the moral problem of 'decency' as one of his gang members said.

Athol Fugard draws a profoundly moving and dramatic picture of a child gang in a dark and life threatening city. The treatment of the variations on the theme of absence - mother, father, friends, moral conscience, life - is not less than masterful.

This book is a real masterpiece.

Gripping and contemporary (despite when it was penned) plot. Meticulous yet poetic writing. If there were a rating higher than "five," this novel would have it.

Los primeros meses de embarazo son las más importantes, ya que es cuando es la gestación del bebe... Aquí encontrarás toda clase de dudas respecto al embarazo. TE SERA DE UTILIDAD!

PLENO DE INFORMACION COMPÀCTA...
UNLIBRO HONESTO QUE CUBRE DESDE LA CONCEPCION HASTA EL AÑO DE EDAD DEL BEBE SIN HACERNOS GASTAR EN VARIOS LIBROS !

FAAABULOSO !

joyful and scared by my absolute ignorance on the matter...

This book is so complete, that I lost my fear, kept my joy and never needed another one!

PARA LOS PADRES QUE ESPERAN UN BEBE, AUNQUE SEA EL TERCERO O EL CUARTO...
Las orientaciones son esplèndidas, llenas de conocimiento y sentido comun... y no terminan con el parto ni comienzan con el primjer mes de embarazo...
LO ABARCAN TODO, COMO LO DICE SU TITULO !
EXCELENTE! NO TE LO PIERDAS!

las m,ujeres embarazadas o por embarazarnos...LO ABARCA TODO, DESDE LA CONCEPCION HASTA QUE EL BEBE CUMPLE UN AÑO...
Dulce, sabio y ameno...

My wife, who was on bed rest for 10 weeks due to pre-mature labor, felt this book really helped her cope. The chapters that I've read also helped me.

One issue that confused me though:
The authors consider 40 weeks to be full term. Others consider it to be 37 weeks.

Upon hearing you're pregnant, most people will only have images of perfect babies. When hearing something is going wrong with your pregnancy, most people have no idea what to expect.
When I heared I was going to have my baby within half an hour, at 26 weeks of pregnancy... I had no idea what was laying ahead of me.
This book prepares you on what to expect when you have a high-risk pregnancy and takes you trough the 24 hours after delivery, your preemies growth and maturation, the neonatal unit, bringing your baby home and later-life development. There is also a part on babies with special needs and a part about when things go wrong.
From the many lonely hours I could not be with my baby, I spent many reading this book. The stories of other parents helped me survivng the nicu and the many charts and statistics helped me to get an image on what to expect.

Thank you very much for this book.

This is THE book I wished I'd known about in advance when we developed problems later in my pregnancy. I actually think anyone expecting a baby where there is a possibility of it becoming a high-risk pregnancy (and face it, that could be any of us, right?) should read this book so that you can be prepared to be the best possible advocate for yourself and your child in the NICU and during the transition out. It will also help you understand the complexities of what goes on in the NICU so you can work well with the staff caring for your infant.

My son was born prematurely June 10, 2004. My 30 week ultrasound came back showing that my ambionic fluid was low and my baby only weighed 2 lbs. 7 ounces. The next day I was sent by my OB/GYN to meet with a perinatologist. Within 15 minutes of meeting the specialist, I was told my baby would be born witihin 24 to 48 hours and was admitted to the hospital 30 minutes later. My son was born via emergency csection 27 hours later. I was 31 weeks into my pregancy. He will spend 9 weeks in neonatal ICU before he can come home. This so far, has been the hardest and most heartbreaking part of my entire pregnancy.

I am 30 years old and was diagnosed with chronic high blood pressure two years ago. This book is a step by step account of what happened to me. I developed pregnancy induced hypertension which turned into preeclampsia. None of my doctors (family practicioner or OB/GYN) told me how dangerous and high risk my pregnancy would be. I wish I knew then what this book has taught me now, it has been a real eyeopener and lifesaver.

A very helpful book for reading during your high-risk pregnancy and when your baby is in the NICU. I did think that the anecdotes about women's experiences with terbutaline and magnesium sulfate were unnecessarily alarming. This book complemented Linden's Essential Guide for Parnets of Premature Babies nicely.

My 15-month-old loves this book! It's always the first one he brings me, and every page gets a big smile.

My 16-month-old loves this book--and we do, too! The author's illustrations are very simple/uncluttered so that we can point out everyday objects in the pictures very easily--high chair, duck, ball, etc. It's a very clever book and the repetitive text is great for babies and young toddlers. We will definitely be on a hunt for other "Nicky" titles! This is one book that I don't mind reading again and again.

Although the pictures are not my favorite (I find they are rather ugly), it is a book I am so happy to have. My son loves it and is so exicted to "read" it himself, laughing as I say the phrases and he finds a page to match. As early as 10/11 months he is really engaged by this peek-a-boo book. Board Book material is rather easily chewed though.

This book is my two year old daughter's absolute favorite. She is charmed by the engaging red-haired toddler and loves to discover his peek-a-boo "hiding" places. This book is really perfect for young children. My five year old loves to read the repetitive text to his sister, while remembering how much he loved this book,too.
There are several "Nicky" books around by this author--some easier to find than others---but our library has all of them. They are truly wonderful.

"Where's Nicky?" Just ask our 1 year old daughter, who will run and pull this delightfully entertaining book from her book basket and utter the words "Shhhhhh. There's Nicky?". A story everyone can enjoy, regardless of age. Superbly illustrated and easily read by all of our children, this book is a must read for any family!

Melanie Bowden details the differences in women's experiences of their first foray into motherhood with detail, insight, and compassion. Every woman's experience as a first-time mother is different, though there are also similarities. This book highlights both the differences and the similarities. Bowden could have written a dry synopsis of these mothers' stories, but she chose to let them speak for themselves, making the book more powerful. I would pass this book on to any new mother I know.

Melanie has taken many real life accounts of new mothers and given direction on how to handle their issues. Working with families all the time as a birth doula, I don't usually see the "other" side of birth - the newborn care. Now I have a resource to share with families having these problems.

A highly recommended book! Written clearly, it is a very realistic and informative book that will help many women understand better what they may be going through. Guys: if you love your wife and you're starting a family, don't hesitate a second: get her this book, as she'll surely appreciate it.

Postpartum Doula Melanie Bowden shares a collection of new mother interviews in her new book "Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me?" Aimed at debunking several motherhood myths, her book shows that life after pregnancy isn't all smiling babies and easy times. New moms from all walks of life share their experiences from being single and married, young and old, delivery at a hospital and at home, as well as both uncomplicated and surgical births. Further, each account has its own unique set of problems - mild to severe postpartum depression, breastfeeding issues, sleep deprivation, annoying visitors, post-delivery health problems, and more.

Bowden does well in bringing many problems to light, many of them embarrassing for the new mom to discuss. In each, the mother had never been made aware of the problems that could arise until she was actually experiencing them. Much of the disappointment in the book comes from an unrealistic expectation of delivery or babies and a lack of knowledge obtained during the pregnancy. Bowden notes that new moms can feel so much stress to be a `supermom' - being able to do it all - that they ignore the signs that they need help. Feeling like a bad mother, incompetent, or not worthy can keep problems locked inside and weigh heavily on the mom's mental state and relationships with her husband or family.

Although sometimes feeling like a 143-page commercial for doulas, "Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me?" is an informative book on the harsh realities of motherhood. Bowden includes further reading recommendations and urges those mothers that are experiencing similar problems to seek help. Motherhood is much more difficult than most imagine and moms-to-be and new mothers cannot overeducate themselves on the only certainty in child rearing - anything can happen.

--Vicki Landes, author of "Europe for the Senses - A Photographic Journal"

This book is so helpful because it reveals the UNtruths new mothers - all mothers, really - believe: that they have to be perfect, that it will be an easy and natural transition, that breastfeeding is pure bliss, or at least the finest bonding ever. The reality is, motherhood is a beautiful thing, a wonderful privelege and GIFT from God, but it is HARD! The first months are exhausting, bewildering, frustrating, and just plain hard. Read this book to find out you're not the only one struggling! It's hard for all of us. Melanie did a great job of exposing the myths and therefore validating all of us that we are doing the best we can and that is all we need to worry about.

This book is awesome because it gives practical information on helping your baby sleep. It is just what it says "52 sleep secrets". They are short and if the baby starts crying and interrupts you from reading, you're not in the middle of a long chapter. It is also great because it doesn't follow one "theory" on raising your kid like Attachment, Ferber, Baby Wise, etc. It just gives info on sleeping and what all people/babies need without telling you to make them cry it out or not cry it out. I loved it!

Kim West's advice about sleeping for children is spot on and more helpful than you could dream it would be. This little book is a handy reference and full of useful tidbits. A wonderful gift for a new mom, it serves as a quick study on how to help your baby and child sleep well. It's also a quick reference and refresher course for second-time (and third- and fourth-time) parents to start out and continue on the right foot. I can't recommend this book enough! And if you want details and anecdotes that support these concepts, you should purchase and read Good Night, Sleep Tight. The Sleep Lady rocks!

This book is amazing. It offers practical easy to use advice to help your baby become a champion sleeper. My son was sleeping through the night by 3 months using the information given in this book. A must have for all sleep deprived new mommies!!! A quick read which is a must for moms with a newborn OR challenged sleeper!!

Loved the first book, "goodnight sleep tight" - but over time you forget some of what you learned from that book - 52 secrets is like a quick reference guide when you hit sleeping setbacks like traveling to a different time zone, or even MORE teething. I'm buying them for stocking stuffers for my playgroup friends!

Kim West has done it again. Good Night, Sleep Tight was like lifesaver for me when it came out, and 52 Sleep Secrets for Babies is wonderful in different ways. Kim West's method is so gentle and loving, and works for people who cannot take the crying methods. With Baby #3 in our house, sometimes I feel like I should know this stuff from all of the time I spent with the first book, but flipping through the "sleep secrets" is a great refresher course, and just a good reminder, in general, about how important sleep is for ALL of us. I gave a copy to a friend who has an infant and she was so grateful. I love that I can pick it up and read a few tips at a time. Great format, great tips!

Billy Bunny is one of my son's favorites, especially since we noticed the easter egg on each page. While Billy is looking for butterflies, a little caterpillar goes through the process from egg to caterpillar to pupa to butterfly somewhere on each page!

This is a wonderful book that subtlely shows the stages of the butterfly laying the eggs through to the emergence of a butterfly. I would definately like to order a 2nd copy as the original copy has been read so many times. This is a keeper. I would highly recommend this book

This book is beautifully illustrated. It is my son's favorite book and we read it almost every night. He cannot read yet, but he loves to uncover the animals behind the pop-up's. He is delighted when he finds the animals. The last page is full of butterflies and he always sqeals in delight.

This book is beautifully illustrated, as are all of Maurice Pledger's books. I have been reading these books to my now four-year-old granddaughter for over two years. She has learned colors and how to identify and count the various items in the pictures. The books by Maurice Pledger are her favorites. She never tires of having them read over and over again, although we have a very large collection of children's books.

The story is simple: Billy Bunny has never seen a butterfly, so he starts looking for one. Six pages feature flaps to lift in the search. Each flap activates a pop-up or causes something to slide into view. As the last page is opened, a elaborate two-page pop-up is revealed. The artwork is very cute. Although Billy does not notice the butterfly emerging from a cocoon as the book progresses, my two-year-old son does.

Tom Arma's Animal Time is my son's all time favorite book. It has adorable photographs of babies in different animal costumes. My 19 months old especially loves the pictures of the elephant and skunk. He makes elephant sounds and swings his arm and plugs his nose when I turn the page to the skunk. I can not express enough how much fun we have had with this book!

Tom Arma's Animal Time is my son's all time favorite book. It has adorable photographs of babies in different animal costumes. He (19 months old) loves the picture of the elephant and skunk. He makes elephant sounds and plugs his nose when I turn the page to the skunk. I can not express enough how much fun we have had with this book!

This book once again showcases Tom Arma's talents as a photographer. The animals are not animals a kid would see or hear about every day so it's a great learning tool. Our daughter loves the babies and marvels at the costumes! :)

I am a first time mother of a one year old and I cannot say enough about these books. I purchased two of them from a school book sale when my daughter was 4 months and she loved them. Since then, I have purchased more at each book sale and this morning am searching on Amazon for the rest of the series. My daughter cannot get enough of the cute babies and silly rhymes. She is walking now and most of the time has a Tom Arma book in her hand. I have even started buying extras to give to my friends when they have babies. I usually don't write reviews but wanted to give KUDOS and my thanks to Tom Arma. If you are considering buying these books, don't even give it a second thought...just buy. Your baby/toddler will love them!!!

We have all ten of the Arma books - they are all VERY well read! The pictures of the babies are wonderful, but when you add in the costumes, it makes for a double pleasure. Also, the rhymes that go with each scenario are just right for a toddler's attention span. The complete set has become my standard baby shower gift!

Steve's talent and passion for child psychology is evident throughout the text. His mastery of Winnicott is unparalleled, as his is ability to carefully disect convoluted concepts in an easily discernable fashion. On a personal level, one would be hard-pressed to find someone who knows more about child psychology than Dr. Tuber. Having met Steve on several occassions now, I feel confident in recommending this masterpiece of his to both anyone in the psychological community, as well as anyone in the English-speaking world.

Steve Tuber's "Attachment, Play, and Authenticity" is brilliantly written, a true pleasure to read in its clarity, originality, and playful approach. Tuber's book is an especially welcome addition as a primer that makes Winnicott's complex and often-paradoxical ideas accessible to a wide range of readers. Tuber unpacks and explicates Winnicott's theories--including "good-enough" mothering, the child's capacity to play, and the "False Self"--through the use of examples from his own experiences as a clinician and as a parent. Tuber also draws on works of popular culture (J.K. Rowling and Bruce Springsteen, among others!) to illustrate the universality of Winnicott's ideas. I highly recommend this book to clinicians, parents, and anyone curious about the inner life of children.

"Attachment, Play, and Authenticity," is a beautifully written primer by Steve Tuber on the work of Donald Winnicott, detailing the richness and clarity of his writing and ideas. Tuber starts each chapter by grappling with a paradox inherent in an aspect of Winnicott's work, and then wrestles with each paradox by delving deeply into a paper or two by Winnicott that is particularly illustrative of that idea. The chapters focus on key aspects of the text, and each passage beautifully illustrates Winnicott's evocative language and depth of thought. Tuber elegantly unpacks the density of Winnicott's ideas while constructing a narrative for the reader, with each theory building on the last, leading the reader to an integrated understanding of the developing internal world of the child. Tuber uses examples from his own work as a therapist, his experiences as a parent, as well as illustrations from classic children's stories that have become classics precisely because, as Tuber shows, they so perfectly capture the emotional dilemmas of childhood. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to delve into Winnicott's work; this book is a must-read for therapists working with clients of all ages, as well as anyone who wants to better understand the emotional lives of children.

Steve Tuber's book, "Attachment, Play, and Authenticity," is an incredible resource not only for students of psychology, but for any mother or mother-to-be. Tuber transforms Winnicott's theories into accessible, everyday language and invokes familiar songs, lyrics, children's books, and other bits of popular media to highlight the manifold meanings behind every moment of mother-baby interactions. As recent mothers ourselves, we found Tuber's ability to capture and make come alive the subtleties of mother-infant interactions remarkable. He describes the importance of the mother's ability to mirror her baby's experience through her facial expressions, the particular ways in which the fluctuations of her mood contribute over time to her baby's development, and the importance of the mother's participation in baby's play--all of which are vital parts of the new mother's everyday experience. Furthermore, this book "gives voice" to the infant, providing mothers with new ways of understanding the inner life of her baby and highlighting just how very psychologically alive their babies are. Winnicott is known for the idea of "good-enough mother," and Tuber's repeated invocation of not only the inevitably but the importance of a mother's imperfect attunement to her baby is likely to resonate with and inspire confidence in mothers. So many new mothers feel overwhelmed with the "rules and regulations" of new mothering provided by the myriad books and internet sites with "to-do" and "not-to-do" lists. It's incredibly reassuring to think that we need only be good enough, not perfect, and that the mother's effort to repair a "failure" is just as--if not more--vital for the infant's emotional development than attempting to provide a perfect attunement at all times.

Attachment, Play, and Authenticity: A Winnicott Primer
Steven Tuber is Professor of Psychology and Past Director, Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology of the City University of New York at City College. His new book on Winnicott's work will be of great interest to play therapists. Of particular interest to play therapists is his Chapter 8, "The Meaning and Power of Play." Tuber states on page 119, that Winnicott "believes that the ability to play is the benchmark for the entrance into a life of health and vitality." Tuber explains Winnicott's notion of the duality of play, "It is the milieu in which the baby discovers her True and hence utterly private self and yet the means by which she engages others and develops support" (p.122). Another important Winnicott concept of play is "Playing thereby allows the child to consistently work on the boundary between illusory omnipotence and helplessness and thus has at its essence the quest for mastery over the inner and outer chaotic (that is, not yet understood) aspects of its experience" (p. 123). Tuber cites an essential characteristic of play in general emphasized by Winnicott, but in play therapy this quest for mastery over the inner and outer worlds, creating cohesive play and later verbal narratives out of the bewildering experiences of a young child is a quintessential task. Tuber also explains that play is about repetition; play themes are endlessly repeated. This redundancy is most valuable to the play therapist because if we miss something the first or second time around, chances are it will come around again. This, however, poses a challenge to the parent, especially the mother who is typically the primary caretaker because she must attempt to maintain a "good enough" connection with the child in the face of boring, repetitions of play themes that may after a point become mind-numbing boring. Ending these play sequences often as a result of necessity involves as Tuber explains the "good-enough" mother learning to help the child make a difficult transition. Among many clinically astute and remarkable insights expressed by Tuber in this outstanding book is his comparison to the role of a child therapist in ending a play session. He states, "It makes me think immediately of what it is like to be a child therapist when the patient doesn't want to leave at the end of the session. These moments speak to how difficult it is to end the magic of play, to end the magic of relating, and for children who have had parents who have been experienced as unreliable, how frightening and/or depriving it is to end the therapy session. These children expect that the ending of the session will also not be reliably done, such that they won't get back to the pleasure of playing and the pleasure of relating" (p.124). Tuber goes on to explain that not wanting to end the session is a sign of hope in child therapy because it represents a wish in Winnicott's term of continuing the "good object" and a fear that the "good object" will not come back. Although the "good object" is viewed as unreliable there nevertheless is implied both the wish and capacity for relatedness.
Tuber beautifully expands on Winnicott's concept of a holding environment and its crucial importance in the creation of the True self. But the very process of creating a true and separate self presents the young human with the ever present prospect of aloneness. Tuber eloquently elaborates on this point, "The capacity to be alone thus implies the need for relatedness. To the extent that the baby can evoke treasured people in its play, and use the play to engage imaginatively with these people in interactions that explore every type of affect the baby knows, then the baby can tolerate the aloneness and indeed come to thrive despite--actually because of--its awareness. We can also say that the capacity to create symbols allows the child to cognitively "hold" her parent more easily, creating a salve to combat aloneness" (p.127). The above examples are samples of the richness of insight and creative clinical process that this beautifully written book offers to my colleagues in play therapy. The other 12 chapters in this book expand on Winnicott's key conceptual contributions and his approach to therapy. This book will be invaluable to mental health professionals unfamiliar with Winnicott's work or those of us who need a refresher. It is a comprehensive, wise, and unusually readable summary of Winnicott's important contributions to child and play therapy. Steve Tuber is a first rate clinician and scholar. On a personal note I met Dr. Tuber more than 30 years ago when he did a Post-Doctoral Internship at the Astor Home for Children. Even in the early days of his career, he impressed me both by his scholarship and research interests and his ability to connect with even the most unintegrated children. I regard him as well as his book as a true gift to the field of child therapy.