LAZY LITTLE LOAFERS

Struggling off to school beneath a huge backpack, a disgruntled child fulminates about how her urban world seems filled with babies lolling idly about. Following a particular specimen (who turns out to be her own sibling), she delivers acid comments about infants sporting sunglasses, learning to walk—“Is it possible they don’t work but still go out for a three-bottle lunch and get a little tipsy?”—and spending long days hanging out in Central Park. Well-decorated with baby ads and posters, Karas’s paint-and-photocollage street scenes form a backdrop for squads of happy toddlers and leave the narrator, who ruefully concludes that babies really don’t work because they’re too smart, peering out of the school door as a passing rugrat delivers a Bronx cheer. A chuckle-inducing rant in the fine old tradition of Martha Alexander’s Nobody Asked Me If I Wanted A Baby Sister (1971). (Picture book. 6-8)