By The Global Fund for Children
Real photographs of babies from all over the world, wrapped and bundled in their own cultures, with a few simple words about how everywhere, in every kind of home, babies are loved.
This one is just faces. Page after page of real photographs of babies from cultures all around the world, each one dressed and wrapped and bundled the way their own family does it, all looking straight out at the child holding the book. The handful of words is simple and warm: wherever they live, however they're carried, babies everywhere are loved and cared for. Babies are famously riveted by other babies' faces, so this is a book a pre-verbal child will actually stare at and reach for, and it does something lovely at the same time, which is show a very small child a great big world full of little ones just like them.
For the youngest age on a shower shelf, a book of real baby faces is close to irresistible, because a baby's favorite thing to look at is another baby. Underneath the simple pleasure of it, it does a gentle, early job: it shows a child that families all over the world love their little ones in their own ways, so from the very start the world looks wide and friendly. It's sturdy enough to be gummed and dropped, the proceeds support children's charities through the Global Fund for Children, and it's a slightly less expected shower gift than the classics, the kind that makes the giver look like they thought about it.