Harry N. Abrams Making Faces: A First Book of Emotions

Good quality book. Sturdy. The content is fun. You can engage with your baby while reading it.

Edit: the book has now been changed - the racist undertones are not present in the more recent edition.My baby is OBSESSED with this book. Absolutely loves all the different faces and the mirror at the back. I love that it introduces emotions, as I want to raise an emotionally intelligent child. I also love that the babies included are diverse, as I want to ensure my child is exposed to a wide range of other people.However, after paying closer attention to the book, I've realized that it's deeply problematic. All the white babies in the book are happy or surprised or silly. The babies of colour are the only ones that are sad/angry. Since the faces change on each double page, I figured that at very least, the white baby who is featured as the "happy" baby would be sad/angry/etc on other pages. Nope! White baby is always happy. The babies of colour do have happy faces on some pages, but it's still hugely problematic. It's not acceptable that it's racially stigmatizing.

Ignore the person who said this book was racist. Some people look for anything to be upset about. As you can see in my photos, there are happy and sad kids from all different backgrounds. This is a really sweet book, my daughter will love it. Very simple and educational, just the way kids like them!

I really want to like this book. Concept, simplicity, repetition, photos are all great. But major problem:“Look at the HAPPY baby”Smiling blond, white baby.“Look at the SAD baby”Sad baby of color.“Look at the ANGRY baby”Angry baby of color.“Look at the SURPRISED baby”Shocked baby of color.“Look at the SILLY baby”Smiling white baby.There are photos of each baby making a variety of expressions, but the featured images assign the two smiles to the two white babies, leaving two very negative and one slightly negative emotions for the babies of color. This could have VERY EASILY been done differently, yet it chose to follow stereotypes. Kids don’t need to see more examples of happy white babies - big editing mistake.

This book was perfect for me to teach my 18 month old how to tell me she was feeling. She has mastered nouns, can count from 1 to 14, knows all her flashcard animals, but I wasn't sure how to teach her emotions and saying sad and frowning wasn't doing the job. Having bought a book which had drawn characters, I still wasn't getting the message across but within ten minutes of her going through these faces she now says 'angry face', 'happy', 'sad' and 'surprised' and understands how they should be used in terms of her feelings. I think the fact that images are used is great.I also want to point out that I nearly didn't buy this book as some comments said it was racist .. I'm mixed race and so buying a book which shows diversity was important. This book is diverse and the minority children aren't all depicting the upset or angry emotions at all. It has a great balance and within the book they have a variety of expressions to test your child understands the emotion. So not sure where the comments came from but this book is diverse, and ideal for 18 month olds

I bought this for my son when he was 9 or 10 months old. He’s a year old this week and still absolutely loves it! He adores looking at the different baby faces, and then making his own faces in the mirror at the back of the book. It’s brilliant for them to hear the vocabulary that goes along with each emotion too. I think this book still has so much mileage in it well into the toddler years - the pages ask you to find one particular face amongst several, and to make a particular face. Several of my friends have asked me about where I got this book: I highly recommend it!