No one knows the world of center-based childcare more fully or writes about it more skillfully than Erna Furman, her husband Robert A. Furman, and their Cleveland co-workers. For nearly half a century, consultants from the Center for Research in Child Development, steeped in the teaching and practice of child psychoanalysis, have contributed their experience and skills to consultation work with preschool and day-care directors and staff.

This is Erna Furman's second volume (after her 1986 What Nursery School Teachers Ask Us About1) in which principles of applied child analysis inform classroom interventions with children and families in community childcare centers. Free of jargon and easily readable by early childhood educators, it is a welcome guidebook for on-site consultants as well. The chapter headings cover a wide range: “Play and Work,” “Liking Oneself,” “On Preparation,” “Working with Parents,”