BABY LOVES TO BOOGIE!

A baby and a bevy of animals demonstrate a variety of dance moves.

With one sentence per page, the text is a mix of puns, jokes and rhymes that, while clever, will likely go over the heads of core board-book readers: “The apes like to orang-o-tango / and the sloths like to slow dance. // The kangaroos can boogaloo, / and the flamingo can flamenco.” Each critter mentioned is depicted in bright colors dancing in their requisite style against bold backgrounds. The goofy cartoons are not as successful as those in Kirwan’s earlier offering, Baby Loves to Rock (2013), but the tap-dancing woodpecker and the toucan doing the cancan are delightful standouts. As in the first title, a double-page spread appears at three different junctures, asking a variation of “But who loves to boogie?” in a graphic, bold display type floating in a disco setting. On the last two pages, readers learn that “Baby loves to boogie, woogie, / BOOGIE!” and three images of a Caucasian baby, likely the same child in as the companion title, bop across the page.

Fans of Baby Loves to Rock will get a kick out of this infant’s moves, but the humor is still too adult to pretend this is a book for actual babies.