YOUR BABY AND CHILD

The birth rate goes down, the baby-book rate goes up, and the commendable ones multiply. AS in Babyhood (1974), British psychologist Penelope Leach combines professional know-how with her own experience and observations. In these usefully illustrated pages, she covers five stages of development (newborns, first and second six months, toddlerhood, preschool years), distilling research findings into practical advice. For example, knowing that infants often resist unsweetened cereals and that early sugared diets lead to lifetime habits, she comes up with an acceptable ratio. Or in discussing the toddler's quirky eating preferences, she dissects two-year-old logic (why pudding held until after the meat increases in value) and defends the right to dip green beans in ice cream (""Just don't watch if you cannot stand the idea of the combination""). Each section explores common patterns of eating, sleeping, and excreting, plus nontechnical graphs of growth rates and compact remarks on emotional issues--grumpy babies, mood swings, stealing. As a single-volume general reference, it's an armful of comfort and a fine new resource.