THAT'S MY MOMMY!

Various animal youngsters share what’s special about their mommies.

Hodgman’s prose describes each mother’s virtue in phrases that mix sentiment with simple descriptions. “My mommy is the most beautiful mommy in the world. / My mommy tucks me in at night.” The soft watercolor cartoons inconsistently place the critters in human or animal settings, but all of the characters wear clothes or accessories of some sort. Most of the scenes are sentimentally warm, as when the mama duck floats by while her duckling braves the water. Others don’t work quite so well, like a difficult-to-read image of an overly made-up ostrich mom and child gazing at each other in a bathroom mirror. The companion title, That’s My Daddy!, follows the same format with animal fathers, but Logan’s illustrations seem to indulge in a little more humor here. The daddy giraffe sports a necktie, and the woodpecker papa uses his beak to hammer in a nail. In both books, the gender roles are quite traditional. The moms teach cooking and wear aprons, and the dads use tools and go camping.

While others have done the trope better, both titles are passable parent-child love stories.