Baby Born

September 1, 1998
PreS-The rhyming text opens "Baby born/in winter's sleep/snowflakes fall/snuggle deep." The verse continues to record milestones in a newborn's development, be it cooing, rolling, creeping, or crawling. Each sentence starts with the word "Baby," thus keeping the text focused and simple. The watercolor illustrations on the other hand are anything but. Instead of following one child's growth as the text implies, each page features several children of different races. While the background scenery is detailed and precious, the babies look like floppy dolls with stiff round heads. Older kids, who are hardly distinguishable from the infants, are also included on the page, confusing the issue at hand. The few adults present look like caricatures with one wide-armed man acting more like a scarecrow than a human being. To further muddle this title, flaps lift to reveal people or objects that are annoyingly superfluous. Finally, the quiet text is marred by the fact that while the babies are born in winter, they turn a year old in spring, another incongruous detail too large to overlook.-Martha Topol, Traverse Area District Library, Traverse City, MI