From School Library Journal
PreS—This collection of six gentle poems, each starring a child interacting with a family member, affectionately describes moments such as first steps, a bath, a carriage walk, and bedtime. The adults, and even a dog, dote on their babies. The activities will be familiar to youngsters, but the rhymes and word choices are sometimes awkward: "A perfect nose,/a perfect mouth,/and extraspecial ears./I love those eyes,/I love that hair,/I love those no-more-tears." Filled with softness and love, the honeyed pencil, watercolor, and gouache illustrations depict an ethnically diverse cast of characters. However, some of the images, overwhelmed by too much white space, look small on the page. Although this is not the strongest work from Rylant or Goode—independently or collaboratively—
Baby Face will appeal to fans of
Good Morning, Sweetie Pie (S & S, 2001) and is especially well suited as a read-aloud to very small children at quiet times.—
Amelia Jenkins, Juneau Public Library, AK Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
There are lots of books about babies, but this one is particularly nice, combining, as it does, the considerable talents of Rylant and Goode. Rylant’s verse is as cute as a newborn as it cites both appearance (“A tiny nose, a tiny mouth”) and actions (“Take a step. / And then take two. / Look and see / what you can do”). Goode does her part by providing watercolors of a multiethnic group of babies, particularly adorable on the cover as they sit en masse. Her artist’s eye pulls great fun from the text, choosing the sweetest moments to illustrate: an infant and dog being dried by the same towel; a teething toddler, chewing on everything from blocks to a blanket. There’s only one question: why wasn’t this book, so obviously meant to be shared with a very young audience, perhaps 9 to 18 months, put in a sturdier board-book format? That aside, parents and wigglers willing to sit still long enough to look and listen will enjoy the shared experience. Preschool. --Ilene Cooper
