Amazing Baby by Desmond Morris

From their button noses to their teeny toes, babies are designed to enthrall us, and Amazing Baby is your one-stop guide to them.  This book, full of gorgeous full-color photographs, tackles every aspect of human infant development, from gestation to toddler.  With sections on “staying healthy,” “how babies learn,” and “emotional life,” Amazing Baby covers a wide range of topics thoroughly and succinctly.  Each topic is amply illustrated with photographs and full-color overlays, and broad categories are broken down into a series of 1-2 page subtopics, each further broken down into 1-2 paragraph sections, allowing the reader to skim for pertinent and interesting information.  This book proves ever-popular, especially with our female students.  When it comes time to browse for books, you can be sure there will be a group of two or three poring over the images and information in this one.

Because it covers such a broad range, the readability of the text varies quite a bit from topic to topic.  Some of the sections dealing with physiology are quite dense, while others dealing with play or common routines are very readable.  The text is well organized, with a table of contents and a comprehensive index.  However, the real appeal of this book is in the stunning images. --Regan Schwartz

It should be noted that there are two images of a nursing infant and one image of a topless, pregnant torso, which may make this volume unsuitable for some readers or environments.

Morris, Desmond.  Amazing Baby. Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 2008. Print.

Knucklehead by Jon Scieszka

Absolutely hilarious and totally relatable. Jon Scieszka invites the reader into his childhood antics growing up as the second oldest in a family of six boys. Family photos often deliver the punch line as Scieszka tells stories about Halloween costumes, school photos, and hand-me-downs. While each of the stories are brief and written in language that is accessible for students with a low reading level, the work maintains a reverence for childhood as a special time from the perspective of someone who has already left it. In this way, it invites even the most disenfranchised students to reflect upon the innocence, silliness, and adventure of childhood without talking down to them. Teachers can easily select one tale to share as a class and invite students to tell their own story.

Scieszka, Jon. Knucklehead: Tall tales & mostly true stories about growing up Scieszka. New York: Viking, 2008.