WHEN COCO WAS A KITTEN

A broadly beaming black-and-white cat with yellow, lamp-like eyes takes center stage as her adoring owner, a little girl, describes her growth: “When Coco was a kitten, she looked like a tiny ball of fluff. / … / Now Coco is a big, grown-up cat. / She can walk on a wall and not fall off,” and so on. With its board format, bright, solid-color backgrounds, simple compositions and direct, declarative text, this looks like a great toddler board book—but the narrator’s retrospective look at her kitten’s growth is a big concept for toddlers, who are only just beginning to grasp the notion that they are changing and growing themselves. For young preschoolers, it will be a good, brief lead-in to such standards as Margaret Miller’s Now I’m Big (1996). (Ages 3-4)