WHERE DO BABIES COME FROM?

A child psychologist offers simple answers to a perennial question.

Opening with the statement “Nature has given every living thing a way to make a baby,” the author goes on to explain that babies come from a mother’s body, from her womb, “just below the stomach.” The combination of a sperm and an egg from a father and mother, whose “bodies fit together,” creates the seed that will become a baby. Going on to discuss a baby’s nourishment via the umbilical cord, she makes a nice connection, pointing out that the child reader has a belly button, too. When the baby is ready to be born, it exits via the mother’s birth canal, at home or in a hospital. Colorful cartoonlike digital illustrations link human children and the wide world of growing things in a variety of scenes including a growth chart measured by fruits and vegetables. These illustrations show families of different ethnicities; in one case two women carry a baby from a hospital. The backmatter—questions and answers in a smaller font without illustration—addresses more-complicated issues, using words like penis, vagina, in vitro fertilization, conception, fertility, Cesarean section as well as mentioning adoption and nontraditional families.

Far less detailed than most such explanations, this title in the Just Enough series for the very young is best as a conversation starter.