BABIES NEED BOOKS
By
Though parents who need Butler's title admonition may not read through her one-toned compendium of appreciative annotations, those who want some gentle help selecting books for their under-sixes will probably respond to her sensible, relaxed approach. Butler begins with infancy, recommending nursery rhymes and simple pictures, and proceeds year by year, prefacing each book talk with a Gesell-and-Ilg-like profile of the child at this stage. The emphasis is on reading for pleasure--the child's and the parent's--and though Butler points out the practical benefits of early reading she doesn't treat the whole project as a task, or burden her readers with structured lesson plans, as do other recent guides to books for babies. Butler assures us that she has tried out all the books she recommends on her own children and grandchildren and the parent-child group she conducts in her British bookshop, and one readily believes that she has been successful with them.