GRANDMOTHER’S SONG

Bauer’s (Jason’s Bears, p. 627, etc.) latest effort is a sentimental tribute to motherhood, both her own and her daughter’s. She expresses in loving and poetic words her emotions on the birth of her own child and then her feelings about the birth of that child’s son, her grandchild. Borrowing from the fairy-tale tradition of “Once upon a time,” she tells her own story as “Long ago, when rain was wet, and the moon waxed and waned” her daughter “sprouted like a mushroom in the secret dark.” That daughter grew and “Then . . . a little while ago, when elephants were large and hives dripped honey,” another baby “grew inside my heart.” “My grandson . . . welcome to the world.” Other language is evocative, likening the baby in the womb to blooming “like fragrant bread filling an oven.” The phrases describing behavior when her daughter was born—“I held her, I rocked her, I counted her fingers and kissed her nose”—are repeated after the birth of her grandson and will resonate with new mothers and grandmothers. Rossi, in her debut as a children’s-book illustrator, creates gentle, soft pastels that fill the pages with the light and color of the natural world and convey the mood and the wonder of the miracle of birth more effectively than the words. A beautifully illustrated celebration of birth. (Picture book. 1-5)