A playful and funny romp that will appeal to dog-owning tots.
A story of life with a baby from the family dog’s perspective.
The narration, meted out in one or two sentences per page, presents the inner monologue of a medium-sized white dog with black patches on its fur. The pooch investigates the newest family member, a newborn baby, and compares (“You howl, I howl”) and contrasts (“You don’t even have a tail!”) himself to this strange new addition to the family. Both of them sleep, eat, stretch, and walk on all fours, but the infant’s front paws aren’t like its back paws, the dog notes, and it doesn’t have a tail or quite smell like a canine. A grown-up with blue eyes and wavy, shoulder-length blue-black hair only intervenes when the baby tries to mount the dog like a horse. The black-eyed baby and the caregiver have medium-brown skin and stylistic pink circles on their cheeks. Nelson’s sophisticated mixed-media collage uses a distinctive palette of mustards, royal blues, and deep greens with hot pink and red accents. The dog’s confusion about this new arrival seems to last several months as the child grows from a swaddled newborn to a crawling tyke playing hide-and-seek. Despite the word baby appearing in the title, the exercise of comparing and contrasting canines and infants will make more sense to toddlers.
A playful and funny romp that will appeal to dog-owning tots. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68369-279-9
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Perfect for Valentine’s Day, but the syrupy sweetness will cloy after the holiday.
Animal parents declare their love for their offspring in alphabetical order.
Each page displays an enormous capital letter, one line of verse with the keyword capitalized, and a loving nonhuman parent gazing adoringly at their baby. “A is for Always. I always love you more. / B is for Butterfly kisses. It’s you that I adore.” While not named or labelled as such, the A is also for an alligator and its hatchling and B is for a butterfly and a butterfly child (not a caterpillar—biology is not the aim of this title) interacting in some way with the said letter. For E there are an elephant and a calf; U features a unicorn and foal; and X, keyed to the last letter of the animal’s name, corresponds to a fox and three pups. The final double-page spread shows all the featured creatures and their babies as the last line declares: “Baby, I love you from A to Z!” The verse is standard fare and appropriately sentimental. The art is cartoony-cute and populated by suitably loving critters on solid backgrounds. Hearts accent each scene, but the theme of the project is never in any doubt.
Perfect for Valentine’s Day, but the syrupy sweetness will cloy after the holiday. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7282-2095-6
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
Leave the hopping to Peter Cottontail and sing the original song instead.
An Easter-themed board-book parody of the traditional nursery rhyme.
Unfortunately, this effort is just as sugary and uninspired as The Itsy Bitsy Snowman, offered by the same pair in 2015. A cheerful white bunny hops through a pastel world to distribute candy and treats for Easter but spills his baskets. A hedgehog, fox, mouse, and various birds come to the bunny’s rescue, retrieving the candy, helping to devise a distribution plan, and hiding the eggs. Then magically, they all fly off in a hot air balloon as the little animals in the village emerge to find the treats. Without any apparent purpose, the type changes color to highlight some words. For very young children every word is new, so highlighting “tiny tail” or “friends” makes no sense. Although the text is meant to be sung, the words don't quite fit the rhythm of the original song. Moreover, there are not clear motions to accompany the text; without the fingerplay movements, this book has none of the satisfying verve of the traditional version.
Leave the hopping to Peter Cottontail and sing the original song instead. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5621-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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