EVERYWHERE BABIES

Meyers and Frazee play a happy, well-tuned concerto on every reader's genetically preprogrammed heartstrings with this long parade of babies: swaddled, sleepy, bright-eyed, screaming with joy and/or rage, being fed, nuzzled, carried, and generally loved by a parental cadre that, unobtrusively, will raise no diversity issues. Frazee (Harriet, You'll Drive Me Wild, 2000, etc.) is even better at depicting babies than Jan Ormerod (if that's possible), capturing in dozens of stubby figures everything from those funny-looking tufts of hair topping rounded or lumpy-looking heads to the utter intensity with which babies express their feelings or explore the bright world around them. Meyers's rhymed captions carry the message that every day, everywhere, babies are born, kissed, dressed, played with, and nurtured: everywhere they make noise, like toys—and, when the time comes, turn into toddlers. The text and pictures make beautiful music together, and like babies themselves, this composition is irresistible.(Picture book. 4-8)