Beastly Babies

A simple rhyming text celebrates some shared characteristics of baby animals. Jackson catalogs a variety of animal offspring ("Babies can be smooth or hairy, / quail or whale or dromedary") and their behaviors: "Tiger babies pounce and fail / when they aim for mama's tail"; "Baby buffalo get grumpy. / Baby kangaroos get jumpy." The rhymes have a brisk quality that will keep the pages turning. Wenzel's bright illustrations, "rendered in almost everything imaginable," will grab the attention of small listeners. The wild profusion of young creatures, leaping, tumbling, and running as animal…

If there’s one thing that parents know, it’s that babies, as much as we may love them, are exhausting. And as this book shows, that’s true in the animals kingdom as well. This wonderfully tongue-in-cheek offering takes readers through some of those babies’ more, well, beastly aspects: they’re loud, they’re messy, and they never stop moving! This amusing readaloud is made more enjoyable by carefully crafted rhymes that delight both in their simplicity (“Puppies slobber / kittens spill / young gorillas can’t sit still”) and their cleverness (“Babies can be smooth or hairy, /quail or whale or…

All kinds of babies appear in this cheerful tribute to mothers and their children. From a human infant to a newborn sloth, all of the babies have one thing in common; they are loved unconditionally by their mothers. Told in rhyming verse, the story showcases sea creatures, barnyard animals, African fauna, and household pets. All of the beastly babies are “Making mischief/having fun,/each is precious/every one.” Tipping her hat to the circle of life, Jackson ends the narrative by observing that when the little ones grow up, they will be blessed with “beastly babies of their own.” Drawn with…

"Babies can be smooth or hairy," writes Jackson, as Wenzel depicts a human baby alongside a kitten and wolf pup. A turn of the page continues the rhyme: "quail or whale or dromedary." The illustrations retain the animals' most prominent characteristics while also emphasizing their eyes. The book includes some scientifically accurate observations, such as natural instincts ("Beaver mamas/ chomp and gnaw,/ using teeth/ just like a saw"), and defense mechanisms ("Baby octopi squirt ink/ Baby skunks cause quite a stink"). But most pages are pure whimsy, such as a charming image of elephant calves…

Author and artist save the best for last: a stop-action series of images of a sloth demonstrates how "Babies muss and fuss and cry--/ but they grow up, by and by." Each iteration of the sloth depicts its slight maturation. "And what awaits them/ when they're grown?" With a turn of the page, the ending brings the life cycle full circle ("Beastly babies of their own"). --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Discover: A joyous rhyming celebration of babies--smooth, prickly, furry and feathered.