Everything You

October 16, 2017
In appealing child-directed rhymes, McPike (Little Bitty Friends) adopts the voice of a parent celebrating everything that makes a child special: “You’re everything fresh,/ the morning’s first dew,/ You’re everything growing,/ our summertime you.” Each couplet rhymes with you, a setup that could turn sentimental, but the book never crosses that line, thanks in large part to the artwork. Fleck (Black Belt Bunny) goes for big contrasts in his high-impact portraits of animal families: three yellow lions march across a dark purple spread, clutching each other’s tails, and a mother hen basks in the attention of her many (many) chicks as they chirp hearts at her. A few “mommy” and “daddy” references make the book best suited to households where both are present, but many families should easily be swayed by its charms. Ages 3–6. Agent: Kelly Sonnack, Andrea Brown Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Kirsten Hall, Catbird Agency.

September 15, 2017
A love song to baby.Rhyming verse expresses animal parents' love for their little ones and is accompanied by cartoon-style illustrations of animal families rendered in bold colors and rounded forms. The succinct text pairs nicely with the spare art style, which offers uncluttered spreads focused on the parent-and-child interactions. "You're everything FRESH, / the morning's first dew," reads one spread, for example, which is illustrated with a picture of a panda cub standing on top of its prone parent while reaching for a dewdrop falling from a branch. Behind them, a blue background is warmed by a huge, yellow semicircle representing the rising sun. Other animal families occupy other pages, so there's no sequential storyline to speak of, but the text as a whole is framed by an opening spread depicting crocodile parents waiting for their (very large) egg to hatch, and hatch it does in the closing spread, which reads, "You're every wish answered, / our hearts, how they grew... / every day countless, / everything you." While the sentiment here is heartfelt, this use of "every day countless" is one example of several instances when word choices undermine clarity. A sweet if uneven expression of parents' love for babies. (Picture book. 1-3)

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February 1, 2018

Toddler-PreS-A gentle and simple look at animal families awaiting a new arrival, Everything You celebrates the joyful emotions a family experiences upon the addition of a new baby. The rhyming text begins with two alligators and a very large egg, accompanied by the text, "We wait and we wait,/we watch all day through,/and our dreams while we wait/are of everything you." Each spread then features a different animal family with two poetic sentences. This pattern repeats throughout until the last page turn, when the original alligator family reappears, this time with a baby alligator peeking out of a cracked open eggshell. "You're every wish answered,/our hearts, how they grew.../every day countless,/everything you." The graphic-style illustrations are cloyingly sweet and endearing, suitably matching the text, and the color tones are mellow and soft. VERDICT A sweet addition to general picture book collections and those early childhood collections looking to expand offerings in the "new baby" genre.-Lisa Kropp, Lindenhurst Memorial Library, NY

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