WAITING FOR GREGORY

Young Iris can’t help but wonder how and when her baby cousin, who is to be named Gregory, will arrive. She asks her most-trusted adults and her friend, Lacey, but their whimsical replies, involving storks and cabbage patches and pickles, leave her unsatisfied. Finally, her mother tells her the plain, honest truth: No one knows the exact day and time . . . we will just have to wait and see. Holt’s narrative conveys the wistful wishfulness of a little one’s wait: The snow, the dandelions and the summer vacation all come and go before Gregory is born. This child’s-eye take on the passage of time is concrete and comforting. In contrast, Swiatkowska’s surreal pictures—color-drenched figures on loan from Renoir canvases set against da Vinci–esque engineering sketches—seem like quirky, Monty-Python-like efforts to diagram dreams. The paintings are dappled and disarming, but young readers may find the disquieting visual narrative a bewildering and curious counterpoint to the much more mainstream text. (Picture book. 4-8)