BABY, I LOVE YOU
by Karma Wilson & illustrated by Sam Williams
“Love my baby’s / little hands, / love those / little fingers, too. // Love my baby, / little one. / Oh, my baby, / I love you!” To the rhythmic verse Wilson has perfected, a multiethnic cast of unabashedly adorable babies express their own love to a sweet beagle puppy in a green-and-white striped shirt. Williams’s soft, smudgy pencil gently provides the outlines, which are filled in with pastel-hued watercolors. Text boxes are set against pastel, patterned backgrounds and feature vignettes of the puppy and various baby-related impedimenta (stroller, socks, blankie). The babies approach Helen Oxenbury–like perfection, lacking only the occasional wicked glint in the eye. Still, only Cruella de Vil couldn’t love this book; everyone else will dissolve into baby-loving protoplasm. (Ages 6 mos.-2)