BABY BRAINS

After Mrs. Brains exposes her son in utero to books, music, and TV news, newly born Baby Brains is reading the newspaper the morning after he comes home from the hospital, fixing the car that afternoon, and performing surgery within a few weeks. With results that parents who compulsively surround their diapered offspring with Baby Einstein products and such can only envy, what’s left? A trip into space—but floating alone, high above the Earth, Baby Brains finds intellectual pleasure giving way to a more elemental need: “I want my Mommy!” James illustrates Baby Brains’s brief career with lively, Quentin Blake–like cartoons featuring a high-domed toddler and pair of flummoxed-looking parents. Their anxiety changes to proud content when he reverts in the end to more baby-like behavior—except on weekends, that is, when he returns to the OR. Overachieving parents will enjoy this gentle poke in the ribs as much as will their doubtlessly brilliant progeny. (Picture book. 6-9, adult)