BABY RADAR

This stream-of-consciousness view of the world from stroller-level will leave both parents and their two-ish passengers in stitches. “Tennis shoes daddy shoes sleepy slippers fat shoes crazy shoes high-up heels fancy-dancy shiny shoes / I stretch my legs to show my shoes / Ba-dump . . . ” Wheeled down an urban street, the speaker rattles on breathlessly, cataloguing tires and dogs, reaching out to snag, well, anything—“It’s mine! / It’s mine! / Everything’s mine! / Roll fast . . . ”—before escaping the stroller’s confines, all too briefly, then dozing off at last at home’s front door. Carpenter works right along with the narrator, showing each passing sight from low angles in sketchy, wonderfully accurate lines and vigorously brushed watercolors. The vocabulary may not be a toddler’s, but the voice, pacing, and sense of excitement are spot on. A tour de force for poet and artist both. (Picture book. 3-6)