Book review: ‘What Makes a Baby’

“What Makes a Baby”
Written by Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smyth
Review by Jan Jamieson, OA&FS counselor

I love this book! It creates space for all families, bodies, and people. Geared toward children in preschool to age 8, it communicates information about conception, gestation, and birth and creates a foundation for language that future conversation can be built on. It opens doors to discuss how all humans are made and to answer the question “where did I come from?” Pages are dedicated to acknowledging the help people receive to bring a child into the world and to the constellation of people who surround a child.

Something that was initially off-putting to me, however, was the fact that, in the illustrations, people are colors that bodies would not normally be such as purple and blue. When people say “no matter what color people are, brown, white, purple…” it bothers me because people aren’t purple, but as I read through the book further, I realized that NONE of the people are skin tone colors which seemed to imply a universal embrace of all colors of people, which then sat with me differently.

Overall, I give a thumbs up for this book and I hope many adults sit down with many children to share the story.

You can read more about the book on Corey Silverberg’s website, and a free reader’s guide includes information on tips for conversations, answers to commonly asked questions, and extra information that you may want to use while reading “What Makes a Baby” with a child.