Super Baby Food

Amazon.com Ruth Yaron cares deeply about what your baby is eating--so much so that her bestselling Super Baby Food is encyclopedic in both scope and size. Ounce for hefty ounce, this manual/cookbook/reference guide is worth its weight in formula, packed as it is with detailed information on homemade baby food, nutritional data, feeding schedules, cooking techniques, recipes, and other invaluable feeding tips. Yaron builds her compelling argument for making baby food at home on the simple premise that food profoundly impacts health, especially when an infant's developing digestive tract is involved. Parents will learn why babies should start out on rice porridge, bananas, avocados, and sweet potatoes before advancing to more difficult-to-digest foods such as wheat cereals and milk products. While Yaron's passionate stance and vegetarian bias may turn off some parents, others will be grateful for her strict attention to potentially harmful additives and chemicals. No matter what their eating philosophy, most parents will appreciate the economy and surprising ease of making baby food at home. This is not gourmet cooking; all you have to do is learn how to boil water and operate a blender. For veggies, simply steam some vegetable chunks and blend. For baby porridge, just grind some whole grains in a blender and boil. It's that simple. And when you're feeding your baby, simple is best. --Sumi Hahn

Boom, Baby, Boom, Boom!

The New York Times Book Review, Jon Agee Mahy's lighthearted prose, punctuated by Mama's "boom-biddy-booms," is hard to resist reading aloud. Patricia MacCarthy's droll colored-pencil illustrations, with their tight, skewed perspective and bright bold shapes, echo the percussive sound of the "diddy-dum-drums." Ages 1 to 5. From Booklist Ages 3-5. A group of animals watches through the window as Mama puts her little one in the high chair and piles the tray full of food: bread and honey, lettuce leaves, apple slices, cheese, and a carrot. Mama sits down at her drum set, closes her eyes, and blissfully beats away, while one by one, the animals come in and share the cheerful toddler's feast. The beat of the drums provides an effective refrain for the repetitive actions and words that add to the story's appeal.