About Face

by Ellen Schecter, Cindy Crawford (Concept), Jade Albert (Photographer)

Supermodel Cindy Crawford and her young son, Presley, show moms and dads that communication does not begin and end with spoken words. Silly faces, flailing arms, big grins, a fist rubbing an eye--all these gestures and expressions speak volumes when Baby doesn't quite have the words to communicate feelings and needs. And when parents respond to their infants' body language, they are sending a very clear message: "I hear you. I'm here for you. You're safe. I love you."

About Face is a bouncy, playful romp with a valuable ulterior motive: to get parents to follow their intuition when it comes to communicating with their babies--and to encourage children to fall in love with words and other forms of language. Author Ellen Schecter's goofy wordplay ("Let's be GROWL-Y, prowl-y, howl-y, and jowl-y, then share grrreat big bear HUGS when we're done.") make the text amusing for readers, even if the rhymes are somewhat forced at times. Photographer Jade Albert and illustrator Paul Harwood intertwine cute photos of babies (and Crawford) with imaginative pastel designs. (Baby to preschool) --Emilie Coulter

Hardcover

First published November 1, 2001

About the author

ELLEN SCHECTER has been published widely in print and on the web. Many of her books are for children, and her first novel, The Big Idea [Hyperion] won the Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. She’s written and collaborated on multiple-award-winning TV for PBS, Disney, CBS, and the Discovery Channel. Not bad for someone who never grew up.

Excepts from her new memoir, Fierce Joy, have been published online on ducts.org, Lilith magazine, and the University of Virginia Medical Arts Journal.

Check out the great reviews of her latest book, FIERCE JOY, at faboverfify: best memoirs of the year so far [faboverfifty.com/bookblog/2012/04]; New York Review of Books: Laura Schultz, in the New York Journal of Books:
“Ellen Schecter creates a visual symphony with her extraordinary command of the unique language of the soul.”
In “Diagnosis Is Not Death,” a review in Tablet by Sarah Ivry: “Illness does not always rob us of our spirit …and Schecter…finds in Judaism a sense of nurturing that… she didn’t realize she craved….I not only want to make peace with my illness, I want to sanctify it."

Reviews

[NayDoubleU · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have negative feeling sand positive feelings in the anti-bias aspect of this book. I believe it did a fantastic job showing different races of the children, although the main character was her son who was Caucasian. The negative of it for me was the fact that it didn’t have any fathers in the book and only mentioned something about a dad once and the rest of the time it was just mommies. It made me frustrated because 1. The book would have been fine without the mention of mommies or daddies and 2. What about the families that don’t have mommies or even daddies in them? I also felt the book was a bit too long, while reading it I often thought “okay, is this the last page yet?” I did appreciate the fact that the illustrations in the book were actual photographs and not drawings. I am not sure if I would have this in my future classroom or not. I am a bit torn about it.