CATEGORY

Dr. Miriam Stoppard is one of Britain's best-known childcare and health experts, and the American edition of The New Parent is bound to please an eager readership. Like so many books from DK Publishing, this Essential Guide for All First-Time Mothers and Fathers is a delight to the eyes. A large but not unwieldy hardcover, it is simply much more elegantly designed than most books in the parenting genre. Color photographs and top-quality charts and diagrams set off text that has been grouped into useful, easily digestible chunks. Topics on every new parent's mind are featured in double-page spreads with titles such as "What Happens in Labor," "The First Day," "Breastfeeding," and "Emergency First Aid," accompanied by well laid-out information on a baby's physical, emotional, and cognitive development through the first year. At times, the text may be a little too simplistic, and there are heftier parenting titles that carry more detailed information. The publishers may also have underestimated the jarring effect of inserting American text into a British book as a means of creating the U.S. edition. Essential information--for example, on maternity rights--has of course been rewritten entirely for the U.S. audience, but some recommendations, such as when to start giving solid food, are sharply different from standard American practice. And besides, American strollers just don't look like that! Nonetheless, The New Parent is a useful introductory book for parents expecting their first baby. --Richard Farr