Review: Sign with Your Baby

Title: Sign with Your Baby: How to Communicate with Infants before They Can Speak
Author: Joseph Garcia
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 3/5
Summary: Researcher Joseph Garcia reviews the fundamentals of communicating with your baby using a sign language based on American Sign Language (ASL).

Review: I chose to read this instead of Baby Signs because I figured as long as we're teaching Abby a second language, it might as well be an actual language (American Sign Language) that she can use later on in life too.

A major benefit of this book is that the text to read is less than 50 pages, and that's nothing to shake a stick at when you're a parent with little uninterrupted reading time. The rest of the book is a glossary of signs. However, I have decided to read Baby Signs after all, even though we still plan to use the signs from Dr. Garcia's book.

There are a couple reasons for my change of heart. I started reading Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love, which is by the same authors of Baby Signs. I really appreciated how the authors did a great job of backing up every major point with specific research studies. In Sign with Your Baby, the emphasis is more on anecdotes from parents and Dr. Garcia's own experience.

Because I was reading both books at the same time, I also found myself preferring the writing style of Baby Minds to Dr. Garcia's writing style. There's nothing wrong with it per se—I just thought the Baby Minds authors were a little more engaging and professional. (The book design might be playing into this impression too, as Sign with Your Baby doesn't exactly have a slick book design.)

But what really sealed the deal for me is that in his book, Dr. Garcia actually mentions and recommends Baby Signs. So that made me realize I didn't have to go with one or the other but that I could learn from both. Duh, Kelly.