Beyond Baby Talk: From Sounds to Sentences - A Parent's Guide to Language Development by Ken Apel & Julie Masterson

On the back cover it states that the book goes "From 'Goo' to Gab - Guiding Your Child to Effective Communication" and I actually think that that's a pretty accurate description of the contents! The book thoroughly covers language development between the ages birth to five years. Naturally I was most attracted to the chapters that focused on social communicative development in infancy, but each of the nine chapters provides great information for parents about what to expect and how to promote those emerging skills. There's also a great chapter on how to support language development in a childcare setting. One aspect that I especially liked about the book was a chart published by the American Speech and Hearing Association (www.asha.org) called "How Does Your Child Hear and Talk?" It's a brief but helpful list of important developmental milestones related to speech, language, and hearing skills.