ALL THE THINGS I LOVE ABOUT YOU

The Mommy-loves-her-young-’un genre is so jam-packed that new entries need to really shine in order to find a place, and this one doesn’t. Rhapsodizing about her young son’s ways, this mother finds her boy so adorable that her first-person narration, though she addresses it directly to her son as “you,” may be more likely to hit the sweet spot for doting parents than little readers. His activities—messy eating, running around naked (no frontal view), “play[ing] with Papa,” hugging, laughing—are presented as simultaneously typical and precious. Some pages will amuse kids, such as the text and funny picture for “I love the way your hair looks in the morning,” while others take too long a view (“I love how every day you grow just a little more…”) or wax too sentimentally metaphorical (“I love the feel of your heartbeat / as if you have a butterfly fluttering in your insides”) to engage tots. Illustrations feel somewhat strained, the figures’ outlines too sketch-like to be anchoring but too heavy to successfully convey motion. Disappointingly bland; Pham has done much better. (Picture book. 2-4)