MAMA’S KISS
by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Daniel Baxter
When Mama throws her curly-headed little girl a handful of kisses, “Most land right, but one kiss misses. / Mama says she’ll throw another, / It sails off toward Baby Brother.” This begins a peregrination that takes that wayward kiss through the neighborhood, into the woods and back (via “a runner’s hair”—Papa, the reader sees) to the little girl it was meant for, spreading affection wherever it lands. Yolen’s meter never falters, providing a rollicking counterpoint to Baxter’s drolly energetic cartoon vignettes, the winged-lipped kiss tying all visually together. Sweet—but not saccharine—good-hearted fun. (Picture book. 3-6)