NEWBORNS

Translated from Spanish, a lighthearted celebration of the miracle of birth, from being spit out by a daddy Darwin’s frog to a baby giraffe’s six-foot drop to the ground.

With the avowed intention of showing “how wondrous and diverse—and cute!—the natural world is,” the author recaps common natal experiences for 25 animals, accompanied by Galí’s fluidly drawn cartoon portraits, mostly of smiling parents and offspring together. The breezy tone is decidedly infectious. Jara describes a mating dance between scorpions that eventually results in “scorplings,” commends the young of the paradoxically named seven-arm octopus, who are immediately ready to float off and “make their mother proud,” and coos that opossums give birth to “around 20 teeny joeys” at a time. Some newlings are born nearly helpless, while others are fully ready to strike out on their own. Amazingly, the armadillo can put active pregnancies on hold, while the alpine salamander’s gestation varies, depending on the altitude at which it lives (two years for those living at 3,200 feet and three years for those that reside even higher). These and other airy facts set a mellow mood for the final animal babies, which are the human ones—“the only living creatures that smile intentionally at their parents,” the author writes fetchingly. The sleeping infant has light pink skin.

Adds both perspective and a positive spin on a universal experience.