BABY BABY BABY
In the Car
written and illustrated by Jodi Dee illustrated by Sogand Seydjoo
Three babies and their mothers struggle with car-ride grumpiness in this picture book.
When a baby starts to cry in the back seat, Mommy pulls over to figure out what’s going on. But after checking the diaper, the mirror, and the bottle, Mommy’s out of ideas. Back on the road, Mommy finally decides to try a lullaby: “So she sang sang sang / and to her relief relief relief,” baby soon falls asleep. Dee’s simple text features repeating words in every phrase, but many of them don’t have the same number of consonants, which makes the scansion feel off and the pattern of emphasis difficult to figure out. Still, the list of things to check when a baby is in tears is likely to be familiar to small lap readers and helpful to new parents in figuring out what their steps should be in a similar situation. While the focused story is thematically well done, the real highlight is the images. Dee and Seydjoo’s illustrations offer similar backgrounds for each of the three mother-baby pairs in the book. The families are coded as white, Black, and East Asian in heritage, but each mother handles her crying child in the same comforting way, and the love in each case shines through. The emphasis on the mothers’ and babies’ faces, whether crying or calm, is sure to draw and hold the gazes of the youngest lap readers.
This family tale’s inviting themes and images make it shine.