Baby's First Book

Art for Baby,  since its publication in 2009, has been my go-to baby gift. I found it in my favourite bookstore Daunt Books in Marylebone High Street. It is a book to accompany the giddy early days with a newborn and beautiful book to remain on the shelf long after a baby has grown up. Each purchase in the UK supports the NSPCC (National Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Children) - I thought this a noble cause as I ordered the book in many multiples for the babies I grew to know well and occasionally babysit and also the babies I didn't even meet. I have had many friends from many fields but the crucial thread uniting them has been a profound love of art and this book is made for my people. Even as I was buying a gift, I bought an extra copy for my unborn child, schlepped it from London to Madras and my mother finally brought the slightly worn copy to my daughter born in NYC a decade later.

The book's content is straightforward, black and white images by famous artists in a board book and also a frieze of the same works for your nursery wall. The front cover has Keith Haring and the back cover a Julian Opie.  It was a radical fact to learn that a newborn's colour perception is limited to black and white and their gaze is held by high contrast images that attract their attention and help them focus in a blurry world.  The most bewitching image in the book is a fabulous image by Bridget Riley - Op Art in all its disorienting glory that gives you a sense of the sort of vision a newborn might be trying to resolve. There is also a very useful image of Patrick Caulfield of a Duck and its mirror image on a lake that is a useful device to explain away the occasional errant expletive to an impressionable baby.

My daughter thankfully loved the book and one of the first things she tore a few months later was the frieze reassuring me that she was getting strong and opinionated. I'm sure she would have been as swayed by any other high contrast images but this taste of the world where I found so much knowledge, pleasure and comfort has always been particularly meaningful to me. Here she is at Sotheby's checking out a Keith Haring at the Contemporary Art sale. Her sneakers, because we are always stopped and asked about them, are See Kai Run.