How to be a Baby by Me, the Big Sister by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Sue Heap

I have a bunch of nieces and nephews and it always cracks me up when they get siblings. The older kids who until very recently (like the day the baby is born) have always been the baby in my eyes are all of a sudden like these incredibly smart giants who know everything. They know how to walk and talk and can eat their own food and are counting and (this is my favorite part) they talk baby talk to their new siblings. I just love watching a 1.5 year old cooing to a baby. Hilarious.

So this book just speaks to me. It's all about a 6 year old who is teaching her baby sibling (never really specifies a boy or girl) how to be a baby. In reality, she's really going on and on about how great she is and how it's really boring to be a baby, but I just see so many traits of my nieces and nephews! My niece Abigail is vain about her hair (just like I was when I was in Kindergarten) and so is the Big Sister in this book. The baby in the book gets dressed up in all kinds of outrageous outfits reminding me of my nephew Matthew when he was a baby (I just know I put some doll clothes on him at one time or another). And don't even get me started on the nick-names. Till next time! -Suzanne

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book? by Lauren Child

Lauren Child of Charlie and Lola fame has written a hilarious book about their friend Herb who falls into a book of fairy tales and has to fess up to crimes that he committed against the book...crimes like cutting out pages and putting them back upside down, drawing mustaches on some of the characters (like the queen in Cinderella) and sqishing peas between the pages.

Herb, looking for help from the characters finds only a crabby Goldilocks (she is the star, afterall and he is stealing her limelight), a Cinderella who can't go to the ball for lack of a prince (Herb cut out him a while back to use as a picture on a card for his mother) and a confused stepmother who is now in the book upside down.

The familiar story book characters paired with the frantic Herb make this book a pleasure to read to yourself or to shar with someone you love! The illustrations are very fun and children familiar with the Charlie and Lola characters may have to read it with a British Accent...very lovely!

The Baby BeeBee Bird by Diane Redfield Massie

Looking for a book to help get a silly little one to sleep? Try this book (or better yet, try the method the animals in the zoo use)! This book illustrated by Steven Kellogg is about an active little bird who wants to sing all night. By doing this, the silly little bird keeps all the other animals awake! The other animals get back at the bird by keeping it awake during the day. In the end, the other animals in the zoo are successful at changing the sleeping habits of the silly BeeBee bird.

I really like the illustrations in this book, and the text is fun and zippy, but I have a hard time with the premise of the story...why should the little nocturnal bird change his natural traits to conform to the group? Of course, living in a community residence, like the zoo, would make such changes beneficial for the good of the group, but why couldn't the author use this book to teach about nocturnal animals and perhaps have the zookeeper reorganize the zoo to put all the noctunal animals together? I suppose, the general idea was to show that babies or small children do need to sleep at night, but animals are not like us humans and I think personally (my own personal opinion!) that the nocturnal-ness of this bird should have been discussed. Till next time! -Suzanne