BEST BABY EVER

Baby hits developmental milestones and his parents go gaga. First smiles, laughs and steps send them running to boast that they have the best baby ever. Their unbridled excitement, unabashed bragging and silly doting will resonate with new parents, but not with young readers. With only smatterings of rhyme and word repetition to engage them, children will find it difficult to relate to a story so squarely centered on parental pride. The use of a Dick-and-Jane narrative style, so brilliantly employed in Milgrim’s Adventures of Otto series of early readers, here fails to succeed, creating a wink-wink-nudge-nudge tone at odds with child-centric collegiality. The bright cartoon illustrations of goofy parents will elicit some chuckles, but won’t keep little ones from squirming to reach for a book that’s truly for and about them. (Picture book. 2-4)