Mariana Bissonnette has written Babies Build Toddlers, a special parenting book that makes child development information both accessible and actionable for everyday readers. It explores the unfolding of the child during the first part of the first plane of development. A beautiful book, with a variety of illustrations that capture the lives of different families, it is the ideal gift for all caregivers of young children.

Erica Moretti’s book The Best Weapon for Peace: Maria Montessori, Education and Children's Rights explores changes in pacifist thought in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe through the work of Italian educator Maria Montessori. Most well known for her work in education, this book opens readers’ eyes to her wider vision. Celebrate Erica in this upcoming interview.

You can receive a discount of over 50% when you purchase The Best Weapon for Peace from University of Wisconsin Press. Use the promo code PEACE30 at checkout.

Mariana Bissonnette (she/her) is an early childhood educator with AMI Montessori teaching credentials for ages 0-6 and has extensive work with children and parents as a parenting coach and classroom teacher. After seeing a gap between parents and early childhood educators in the first years of life, Mariana founded a community program, PEACE (Parent Education and Child Empowerment) to connect with parents through life’s earliest and most critical stage of development. In this program, Mariana has worked with over 1200 families with 0-18 month infants with in-home visits, drop-in support groups and parenting workshops (and has parented two of her own). Mariana was born, raised, and is currently residing in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband (AMI 3-18 educator and co-founder of Arc Montessori), two children and two dogs. Babies Build Toddlers is Mariana’s first book.

Erica Moretti is an Assistant Professor of Italian at the Fashion Institute of Technology-SUNY. She received a Ph.D. in Italian Studies from Brown University and a diploma in American Studies from Smith College. Her research — rooted in biopolitics, gender and sexuality studies, and critical theory — focuses on pacifism, refugees and displacement, and humanitarianism in Modern Italy. With Sharon Wood, she published a collection of essays on British-Italian writer Annie Chartres Vivanti. She has published on assimilation policies in the United States in the Progressive era, the Italian feminist movement, and Italian colonialism, among other topics. The Best Weapon for Peace: Maria Montessori, Education and Children's Rights is her first book.