This is an attractive and useful guide filled with recipes for anyone with questions about feeding babies.

I have a 2-and-a-half-year-old and a nine-month-old. We've gone through the first foods stage with the first, obviously, and are in the middle of it with the youngest. We are a vegetarian family that eats seafood about once a week and enjoy cooking as often as possible.

The highlight of the book is its focus on preparing your own food for your child. It encourages readers to skip the jar and make your own food, for health, taste, and cost. We used baby food from the store almost entirely for our first child. Before receiving this book, we decided to try out the baby food mill for the second and couldn't believe we didn't do it before. It's so fast and easy and we feel better that we're not creating the packaging waste, wasting our money, and feeding our baby less of the sodium-laden jarred food. This book offers plenty of recipes for the different stages of feeding your baby and tips for easily making your own food. We will refer to it often over the coming months.

The bulk of the book is taken up with information on feeding your baby in a Q and A format. It goes into everything from when and how to begin solid food, allergies, health, and more. This information is organized by age along with the recipes.

I appreciated the strong emphasis on breastfeeding in the first six months and on waiting until then for the first solid foods. The recipes in that section for breastfeeding moms were a nice touch!

One quibble is that the book is just a bit too normed for meat-eaters. I don't expect a general interest book about cooking or food to ignore meat, but I didn't appreciate vegetarian/vegan issues being relegated to a couple of Q&As and a recipe. Some of the language also made it seem as if red meat was essential for babies and breastfeeding moms for its iron. In many places, though, the author nicely refers to tofu, lentils, and other legumes alongside meat without specifically mentioning it's for vegetarians. I would recommend a few minor changes to include more such language that doesn't "ghettoize" vegetarians and maybe a few more vegetarian recipes or suggested vegetarian substitutions to existing meat-based recipes.

Finally, I found it interesting that the author seems to me overly concerned with sanitizing everything but not as concerned with allergies. Maybe this is just a cultural difference that happens when our modern cultures get obsessed with health fads. Allergies seem to be a big one now and both of our children have been allergic to a protein in cow's milk that comes through the breast milk. Children typically outgrow it, as our first did, by the time they are a year old. From discussions with doctors and other parents, this allergy does not seem uncommon, yet it isn't mentioned in the portion of the book on breastfeeding. The book also seems to be rushing some foods that we have learned to wait until at least one year for certain foods like dairy, eggs, nut butters, wheat, and seafood. I understand that there's no real consensus on when to first introduce those foods, but I found it interesting that the author is liberal with introducing those foods early, but is strict when it comes to sanitizing everything. She recommends sanitizing everything in the food preparation and serving process and using previously boiled water to rinse bottles coming out of the dishwasher and to serve to baby in her food and drink. I know that sanitation is important, but this just seemed a little overboard to me.

Overall, though, my criticisms of the book aren't too strong, even the vegetarian one. This is an excellent book that will be used and enjoyed. ( )

There are two different types of books in the baby food cookbook genre--books that primarily answer questions about what a child should be eating, when, and books that primarily provide recipes. First Meals and More is an excellent addition to the former type.

Although a few of the terms may be hard to understand for an American mom unused to British terminology, in all this book is an excellent resource. It will be the book I now recommend to moms who want to know how and what to cook for their infants and young toddlers.

This book has useful information and some interesting recipes, but like all parenting books, it shows the author's biases. Of course, when an author's biases don't match your own, you tend to think less of the book. In terms of the "Your Questions Answered" the book did a good job of addressing many different topics that new parents are curious about, although some of the answers were vastly different than our doctor gave us. As a cookbook, however, there was much to be desired. Most of which is no fault of the author. The interspersing of recipes with the question and answer things made it more difficult to find and use recipes, and the hardcover binding makes it nearly impossible to leave the book open to a specific recipe while preparing. Also, for us, by time our son was ready for the more elaborate meals in this book, it was simpler to tailor our own meals to his diet and make one meal for the family rather than preparing him one of the meals from this book. ( )

Offering more or less general advice on parenting related to food as well as recipes, this book does neither one well. Some recipies are fine others are lousy, but the jumbled organization makes it a chore to read and difficult to use as a reference. The author also offers advice for which she has no apparent expertise and for which she cites no other authorities. If the book did not pretend to be authoritative and uncontroversial this might be OK. She is not a nutritionist, but seems to pretend to be one. ( )

Its a fairly good book, however it is very similar to Annabel Karmel's other books. This one is more of a Q&A book, and does have some good info. I like how the questions start with early info, and the questions cover a lot of information. The pictures are colorful and the format is very engaging. The only drawback is that once you have one of her books, it feels like the same book revisited. Good on its own, but if you have a couple of her books, than you've got most of what's here. ( )