“In the spring when things turn green, / many babies can be seen. / Fuzzy bunnies, / sleepy sheep... / ...little chicks that like to peep.” With a verbal and visual aesthetic that’s skewed to the aggressively cute, this gooey offering presents a parade of predictably sweet babies (no baby gators or dragonfly nymphs here), each with a touch-and-feel patch to encourage tactile encounters. There’s little in the text to guide babies toward a description of what they’re feeling, which requires readers either to break the rhythms to explain just exactly what the chicks’ beaks are supposed to feel like (which is…?) or to ignore the touch-and-feel component in order to keep the textual flow. Either way, it’s a miss. (6-18 mos.)
