Baby farm animals are fun, but they grow up—this book provides a sweet vicarious experience.
Adopting a young animal teaches responsibility and caring.
When Ila and her family move to the country in search of a simpler life, they take on more than they imagine when they adopt a newborn lamb. Ila lives with her hipster parents, her “grumpy teenage sister,” her baby sister, and three cats. The lamb, christened Albert, gives her a focus for maternal love and an education in caring for a young animal. Although the lamb is very tiny (“smaller than our cats!”), he has outsize needs. At first he lives in the kitchen but, due to his bathroom habits, is quickly moved to an outside barn, where he requires regular feeding and protection from predators. In spite of his material needs, he wins the hearts of the family. Even sister Sosi becomes less grumpy when Albert is around. As the lamb grows, Ila develops a routine for feeding and caring for him but worries about his need for socialization. When Ila notices that family members act a lot like sheep around Albert, she comes to the important realization that the family is fulfilling the role of the sheep’s flock even though they are not sheep. This sweetly naïve tale is told through cute cartoon-style black-and-white line drawings with pops of red, all on a somewhat harsh yellow background, and Ila’s straightforward narration, the latter set in a typeface that emulates hand printing. All human characters present White. (This book was reviewed digitally with 8-by-16-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75% of actual size.)
Baby farm animals are fun, but they grow up—this book provides a sweet vicarious experience. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7352-6653-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
A sweet and unexpected addition to the waiting-for-baby shelf.
A big, yellow hound dog has small, wonderful dreams.
Emma’s dreams are doggily simple. Rendered in gray, they manifest above her contentedly slumbering form: “singing, dancing, rolling in grass, splashing in water, going for walks,” and eating. After she wakes and eats, she naps again, sprawled on her back, tummy distended, the very picture of canine bliss. Pages turn, with Cooper’s lyrical text focusing on Emma and her sensations: “The days went on, shifting and taking shape, and now there were times when her whole body felt strange, but there was no stopping the days.” A gently curving line of overlapping Emmas, rising, stretching, scratching, shifting, and resettling, underscores time’s march. Adult readers may be anxious at this point, fearing Emma’s impending death with the page turn—but no, it turns out Emma’s been literally full of wonders, and she gazes mildly at a puppy emerging from her own body. Then there they are, seven little Emmas, and they now embody her dreams. Cooper’s brushy, loose watercolors, outlined in swoops of ink, complement his Emma-focused text. She resides in a human home, but her owner appears only as tan-skinned hands extending from the margin to offer a bowl of food, caress her snout, or towel off a pup. In this way, Cooper invites readers into Emma’s interiority, allowing them to sit quietly and wonder with her.
A sweet and unexpected addition to the waiting-for-baby shelf. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884763
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history.
A sonorous, soporific invitation to join woodland creatures in bedding down for the night.
As in her Moon Babies, illustrated by Amy Hevron (2019), Jameson displays a rare gift for harmonious language and rhyme. She leads off with a bear: “Come home, Big Paws. / Berry picker / Honey trickster / Shadows deepen in the glen. / Lumber back inside your den.” Continuing in the same pattern, she urges a moose (“Velvet Nose”), a deer (“Tiny Hooves”), and a succession of ever smaller creatures to find their nooks and nests as twilight deepens in Boutavant’s woodsy, autumnal scenes and snow begins to drift down. Through each of those scenes quietly walks an alert White child (accompanied by an unusually self-controlled pooch), peering through branches or over rocks at the animals in the foregrounds and sketching them in a notebook. The observer’s turn comes round at last, as a bearded parent beckons: “This way, Small Boots. / Brave trailblazer / Bright stargazer / Cabin’s toasty. Blanket’s soft. / Snuggle deep in sleeping loft.” The animals go unnamed, leaving it to younger listeners to identify each one from the pictures…if they can do so before the verses’ murmurous tempo closes their eyes.
Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7063-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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