What child can resist a picture book featuring a multitude of sweet baby animals? Fetching illustrations of adorable animal babies greatly enhance the rhyming text, which tells the spare tale of one summer day in the country. Many of the pictures show parents. The text is slight, but Macnaughton’s widely varied color palette will keep children’s attention. From a faun’s awakening at dawn, to the end of the evening and a fluffy young owl, young animals frolic, sleep, eat and generally look adorable. Attention to detail is clear in the sketches of plants, and especially the butterflies that float through the pages, linking the animals together. A good bedtime book, this is likely to be popular with both parents and children. (Picture book. 2-5)
