You and Me, Baby
Lynn Reiser and Penny Gentieu
Knopf Books for Young Readers, $15.95
40 pp.; ISBN: 978-0375834011

Review by Amy Brozio-Andrews

If you have babies and toddlers at home, you know how much they love seeing other babies -- waving hello and goodbye, making faces, pointing, and smiling. Lynn Reiser and Penny Gentieu's You and Me, Baby captures that same familiar appeal for young readers in a picture book with energetic verse and colorful photography.

You and Me, Baby is a series of vignettes that chronicle baby's daily activities with Mom or Dad. Whether it's time to snuggle, mealtime, playtime, bath time, or bedtime, Reiser's affirming verse is short, sweet, and attention-getting: "Hey, baby! Look at you, looking at me…" Action words, and the use of first and second person perspective ("Mmmm, baby, hug me, hugging you, hugging me, hugging you!") reinforce the intimacy between the parent and child in the book, and reflect that for the reading parent and child, too. Simple sentences and repeated words allow for enjoyment of the book by even the youngest readers. Reiser's writing style and choice of words makes it easy for kids to chime in and repeat phrases if they're able to.

More than just entertainment, You and Me, Baby can help parents build their child's vocabulary, too; the words and photos lend themselves to talking with babies. Big, clear photographs encourage parents to point out and name items and activities (hugs, waving, cookie, bath, etc.), and the verse encourages repetition. There's even a quick game of peek-a-boo during bath time, baby's favorite.

Gentieu's beautiful photo layouts direct young children's visual focus to the parent and child who are performing the activity named in the narrative (i.e., hugging, bathing, dressing for bed). The colors of her subjects' clothing is complementary to the plain solid color background, which changes from vignette to vignette. All the shots are mid- to close-up; Gentieu fills the page with larger than life babies and allows the natural expressions of the children's faces to set the tone. The diversity of parents and babies represented in the book ensures babies will see pictures of a kid who looks just like them.

Both author Lynn Resier and photographer Penny Gentieu are children's book veterans. Reiser is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale University, and the author/illustrator of Play Ball with Me! and many other picture books for very young children. Gentieu is a skilled and experienced photographer of babies, and it certainly shows in this book; the babies and parents in the photographs look very comfortable and very natural. Gentieu is also the author/photographer of Wow! Babies!, Baby! Talk!, and Grow! Babies!

Unfortunately, You and Me, Baby is produced in the typical picture book format; with regular paper pages, it may not be up to the usual toddler wear and tear. The book is certainly not drool-proof, and babies punching pages -- identifying babies' eyes, or a cookie or teddy bear -- with sticky fingers may take quite a toll on the book. You and Me, Baby can be well-loved book, but perhaps with a little parental supervision, so it isn't loved to tatters and torn pages, because babies will love looking at this book.