BABY KOALA

New entries in the “Nature Babies” series, these combine, as previously, simply worded texts with plenty of small color photos taken in the wild, and follow newly born animals through their first years. Lang mentions predators, but keeps the overall tone light—“Koalas are lazybones. They sleep and sleep and sleep. They sleep twice as long as you do.”—and Lynch follows suit, with cute close-ups of babies snuggling against their mothers’ chests, the young three-toed sloth scratching his head in a seemingly puzzled way, and the like. Still, capped by a page each of closing facts, there’s enough specific information here—koalas are so logy because eucalyptus leaves provide a low-energy diet—to satisfy the most demanding young naturalists. (index) (Nonfiction. 7-9)