What Every Baby Knows by T. Berry...

What Every Baby Knows by T. Berry Brazelton MD (Addison-Wesley: $14.95).

T. Berry Brazelton, hailed on the dust jacket as “America’s best-loved baby doctor” and “the pediatric guru of the 1980s,” has impressive credentials.

He’s a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, the developer of a neonatal assessment scale (used throughout the world) and author of many widely read books. But what he’s done here is to clap the contents of scripts prepared for an educational-TV series between hard covers, adding only an index of pertinent terms.

The result is an uneasy “translation,” full of obvious advice couched in predictable dialogue. We follow five families, who have starred in the series, as they deal with such problems as having twins (one is hyperactive, the other passive), giving birth to one of the tiniest of “preemies,” telling a sensitive boy his parents are divorcing and struggling with “overload” (too much adult attention and stimulation).

Though all the cases make for easy, informative reading--and Brazelton, ever reassuring, illustrates how each problem is smoothly resolved several years down the road--he’s written neither a guide harried parents might consult for an emergency, nor a clear overview of early childhood care.