DADDY HUG

This husband-and-wife team’s addition to the daddy-adoration genre comes out just in time for his big day. An adorable but realistically portrayed cast of animals parades through the pages, daddies with their offspring. One by one, compact rhyming couplets describe the various dads: “Daddy busy / Daddy strong / Daddy slimy / Daddy long.” These pages depict hummingbirds, gorillas, snails and snakes, respectively, each interacting with his children. Many of the adjectives and verbs appear in delightfully descriptive fonts—“fluffy” sprouts soft-looking feathers, while “dirty” shakes off clumps of mud. The gentle rhyme sets the tone for bedtime, and the final spread is the perfect segue to sleep, with a group of daddies hugging their children close. As always, Chapman’s illustrations define the mood and tone for the text. Her animal families are warm and loving, with expressive faces, and she keeps their interactions and activities natural. A cuddly tribute to all the things that make a dad, Dad...and not a bad way to reinforce a child’s concept of adjectives and verbs, either. (Picture book. 3-5)