BABY GOOSE

McMullan brings babies to center stage in 27 thematically arranged, deftly altered Mother Goose rhymes—“Hark hark the dogs do bark / The babies are coming to town,” “Oh, the Baby Duke of York / He had ten thousand men,” “Baby Foster went to Gloucester,” etc. Lemaître illustrates each with a cartoon-style scene, featuring diaper-clad toddlers accompanied by a varied and recurring cast of farm animals, pets, bugs, bath toys, and dancing sausages. Unlike Rosemary Wells’s Here Comes Mother Goose (1999) and similar collections, there’s no breaking of crowns, falling of cradles, or other violence. Oversensitive parental readers may be pleased by that, and certainly by the tongue-in-cheek art; babies will, as ever, enjoy hearing the playful nonsense. (Nursery rhymes. 0-3)