More cozy family bonding from the creators of Guess How Much I Love You (1995). When three cubs want to know which is their parents’ favorite, Mama and Papa Bear provide inclusive but satisfying answers. The bears, sporting a subtext-engendering array of hues and markings, pose closely together in various ursine or human postures amid minimal natural settings; Mama and Papa are plainly inseparable, and the young ones, though aware of their physical differences, hold paws on the cover and are, throughout, poster “children” for sibling harmony. McBratney and Jeram again combine to address a common childhood anxiety in a relaxed, irresistibly soothing way, and the competitiveness that mars their bestselling earlier title is much reduced here. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7636-2442-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Never has the power of suggestion been more irresistible, as Butler (Whose Baby Am I?, 2001, etc.) offers a series of drowsy animal parents and their young nestling down together for the night. Paired to one large-type couplet each—“Hush, little penguin, go to sleep, / nestled between your fathers feet”—the snoozers are rendered in astonishingly lifelike close-ups, on oversized, double-paged full-bleed spreads, every downy feather or tuft of fur, every bright eye carefully limned. Butler intensifies the coziness of it all even further by giving every joey, colt, chick, cub, and pup a subtle smile; children will be smiling too as they drift off to dreamland on the wings of this sonorous beddy-bye rhyme. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-56145-269-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The toddler and nursery-school sets will delightedly clap and cavort in step with this wide-awake baby, who boogies with a succession of toy animals rather than settle down to sleep. Plecas’s cartoon scenes of young parents in a cozy country home, patiently corralling their exuberant offspring again and again, make inviting backgrounds for an infectious rhyme, modeled on “The lady with the alligator purse,” and with easily guessable punch lines hidden beneath small gatefolds: “While Papa hauled the water / And Mama fixed the chow / Baby danced the cha-cha / With the chocolate-colored . . . COW. / Whoa! Papa’s water! / Whoa! Mama’s chow! / ‘Go!’ Baby giggled with the chocolate-colored cow.” Mama and Papa eventually throw in the towel, and dance along until the setting sun sends Baby at last to dancing dreams. Don’t even try to sit still with this one. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8037-2587-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
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