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BAD BABY by Ross MacDonald

BAD BABY

by Ross MacDonald & illustrated by Ross MacDonald

Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 2005
ISBN: 1-59643-064-8
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Jack, hero of Another Perfect Day (2002), is back, but something’s missing. When he gets the news that a baby sister’s on the way, he realizes that that missing something is “someone to play with!” But the little sister he initially calls “wee tiny baby” soon grows into a rampaging, colossal, diaper-clad toddler who makes Jack’s days anything but perfect (except when she’s asleep). MacDonald recreates his conceit of Jack’s alter ego, a Dick Tracy–like stalwart, who moves through the day in Jack’s imagination as the quintessence of all small boys’ aspirations, diving in candy and hogtying dragons with equal aplomb. Bad Baby, however, is very much a baby, albeit of monstrous proportions, who, baby-like, wrecks just about everything Jack tries to do—to the idiotic cooing of the on-looking adults: “Awwwww! That’s adorable!” The sunny palette and hilariously imagined situations take the sting out of the very real frustrations of a little boy who’s forced to share his life with a newly mobile sibling—as does Jack’s evident love for the little monster. A new and very funny take on a perennially relevant subject. (Picture book. 5-8)