SHOE BABY

“There once was a baby / Who hid in a shoe / And had learned how to say, ‘How do you do?’ ” Thus begins the rollicking, rhyming, Edward Lear–style story of the adventures of the rosy-cheeked Shoe Baby. First, the happy toddler goes to sea in the shoe and meets a dolphin and a wonderfully peculiar, man-headed octopus with crazily patterned arms. (The “sail-away” baby says “How do you do?”) The baby flies, sings and even has tea with the Queen and King in the shoe. When he falls asleep in the shoe, “So dozy, so cozy, / So tickety-boo,” he dreams of a pink cockatoo until a giant and giantess come by boo-hoo-hooing about a lost shoe (the giant) and a lost baby (the giantess). Baby wakes up, grows right out of the shoe, and pops up to say “Hi, Papa! Hi, Mama! How do you do?” Polly Dunbar’s delightful mixed-media collage illustrations of eccentric creatures great and small burst forth with as much glee as the text in this contagiously exuberant mother-daughter collaboration. (Picture book. 2-5)