Until Now

Sleeping angels. Flower fairies. Woodland nymphs and watermelon seeds. Anne Geddes's magical world is populated by hundreds of beautiful, chubby babies and gorgeous children dressed as peapods, pansies, peonies, and pearls. Geddes fans will be thrilled by Until Now, a lush, coffee-table-sized, 10-year retrospective of Geddes's work, including 1991's crowd-pleasing "Cabbage Kids," featured on calendars and coffee mugs everywhere, as well as many previously uncollected shots from Geddes's New Zealand studio.

It's not all costumes, though--the 1997 portrait of Caleb, 3 weeks old, is a beautiful, unretouched close-up of the sweetly sleeping newborn, belly-button still poking out and skin peeling. A portrait only a mother could love? Hardly. Caleb's perfect little sleeping face would evoke maternal feelings from a stone. Particularly fun and often touching are Geddes's notes at the back of the book. For example, of "Rebecca," she writes, "How do you get a 14-month-old to sit still? Show her the jelly bean, and then put it down her trousers." The resulting photograph is of a lovely, mop-headed, tummy-grabbing toddler peering intently at her own navel. Incorporating both rich color and black-and-white photographs, Until Now will delight parents, grandparents, and baby-lovers of all sizes. --Rebecca A. Staffel