WELCOME TO THE WORLD: How Mary Has Kittens

Kiddish cartoons and a hand-written text tell it like it is when a cat gets pregnant (""Spot thinks Mary has a good smell. . . . Spot puts sperm inside Mary""), gives birth (""Mary is biting off the umbilical cord. . .""), and tends her kittens; and there's a final reminder that ""All babies are born this way including you and me."" But the scribbly, sketchy look and the blunt explanations hold none of the wonder that one finds, for instance, in Carla Stevens' photographic The Birth of Sunset's Kittens; and in all their elaborate casualness they represent more of an evasion than would a direct, respectful treatment of the subject. The book seems better suited, in fact, to the casual pretenses of older kids than to the solemn concentration of preschoolers.