This Is the Baby (Melanie Kroupa Books) [Hardcover]

Candace Fleming (Author), Maggie Smith (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 2 and up | Series: Melanie Kroupa Books

Getting this baby dressed is not going to be easy!

This is the diaper, often a mess,
that goes on the baby who hates to be dressed.
"No! No! Nooo!"

Take one toddler who can't stand getting dressed. Add a mother who is determined to dress baby. The result is a laugh-filled struggle as this mommy uses all her ingenuity and powers of persuasion to get baby into diaper, T-shirt, sweater, and many layers of winter clothing. But just when she thinks she's succeeded, baby peels everything off and happily struts, naked once again. Yes! Yes! Yes!

Witty pictures full of affection reinforce the high spirits of this comic battle of wills so familiar to parents -- and toddlers -- everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-Grade 2–Any parent who's ever wrestled a recalcitrant, wriggling child into his clothes will smile in sympathy with this patient and playful mother who decides to use lighthearted distraction as a means to get duds like "the sweater, itchy and hot/that covers the T-shirt,/wrinkled a lot/that snaps over the diaper,/often a mess,/…on[to] the baby/who hates to be dressed." And even though mom does seem to succeed, and even to coax the glimmer of a grin out of her grumpy little guy, you can just bet that he is determined not to stay dressed for long. "No! No! Nooo!" Smith's naive and rosy-cheeked characters, cozy textures, and crayon-box colors are a perfect accompaniment to Fleming's well-constructed, cumulative, "House That Jack-Built" patterned story that positively insists on reader interaction, whether one-on-one, when it's fun to hunt for the endpaper-pictured elements that appear throughout, or with a great big group, who will giggle and grin and surely join in the oh-so-familiar game (which would make for wonderful flannelboard fun, too). Add this pleasing piece to your accumulation of storytime tales.–Kathy Krasniewicz, Perrot Library, Old Greenwich, CT
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

PreS. Fleming and Smith show the professional wrestler in every mom in this picture-book dramatization of getting a toddler dressed. Baby disdains dressing in layers, but Mom is determined to top off the diaper with a "sweater, itchy and hot," "jeans, stiff in the knee," and "boots, pinchy and tight." While Fleming's text narrates the battle of wills to the rhythm of "The House That Jack Built," Smith's artwork shows Baby squirming and struggling, Mom chasing and cajoling, and exasperated expressions all around. The familiar cumulative structure makes this a snap to read aloud, and kids will delight in repeatedly shouting out "No! No! Nooo!" along with intractable Baby. Smith's gum-drop-hued paintings infuse the tussling with tenderness as the stylized, rosy-cheeked characters negotiate the familiar domestic struggle. The twist ending will leave children and parents alike chuckling in recognition: off comes the hard-won outfit, leaving Baby to streak "free and undressed . . . Yes! Yes! Yes!" A fine companion to Margaret Chodos-Irvine's 2004 Caldecott Honor Book Ella Sarah Gets Dressed. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 2 and up
  
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (August 12, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374374864
• ISBN-13: 978-0374374860
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #399,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bringing Up Baby, November 26, 2005

By 

M. Allen Greenbaum (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Is the Baby (Melanie Kroupa Books) (Hardcover)

The reviews above indicate that the technical name for the book's rhyming format is a "cumulative poem." As a mother layers dresses her tiny toddler daughter in cold weather clothes, each preceding layer is included in succeeding rhymes (as done in the poem, "This is the House That Jack Built.)"

Starting with the declarative "THIS IS THE BABY who hates to be dressed," an incredibly patient mother battles an uncooperative child and a well-meaning but obstructive dog on each page. Just four layers in, and the rhyme has recursively built itself into the following:

These are the jeans, stiff in the knee,
that match the sweater, itchy and hot,
that covers the T-shirt, wrinkled a lot,
that snaps over the diaper, often a mess,
that goes on the baby who hates to be dressed.

The cover illustration captures the girl's strong resistance, and author Candace Fleming's text describes the uncomfortable sensation of some clothes, a discomfort of which some adults may not be aware. There's a lot of fun here for toddlers old enough to recognize themselves among those who'd rather not put on all those layers of "itchy," "stiff," "pinchy," clothes. Every so often, a layer gets a "No! No! Nooo!" reaction, and the coup de grace occurs when the girl strips off every layer of clothing until she is completely naked again, and shouts, with a huge smile: "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

At this nudist conclusion, even the mother is smiling, and the book nicely portrays both competing points of view of mother and child. This, of course, is an idealized version of such conflicts, but with the right child, it may give both parties an opportunity to recognize themselves and laugh. For other adults, however, it may remind them of clashes that are much more fractious then this one. One other warning should be mentioned. I wonder whether tired adults are really going to enjoy repeatedly reading the cumulative rhyme to their young audience. That's the downside here, if your youngster really loves the book, you're may become as tired as the mother pictured here, and not be as cheerfully patient about it as she. The clothes' appealing patterns and textures, and the two characters' facial expressions highlight the colorful antics. If only the publishers had chosen thicker paper, a larger format book size, or both, "This is the Baby" would have been more enjoyable.