Paula Polk Lillard

Lillard trained as a Montessori teacher and spent decades in classrooms before founding Forest Bluff School in Illinois, and Montessori from the Start, written with her daughter Lynn Lillard Jessen, applies the method to the first three years, before a child would normally enter a school at all. The practical argument is that infants need a prepared environment rather than entertainment: a floor bed instead of a cot, real glass instead of plastic, movement unrestricted by seats and slings. A good deal of that runs against ordinary parenting products, and the book says so plainly. Her earlier Montessori: A Modern Approach is the general introduction.