This cheerful picture book celebrates the first year of life. The rhythmic, rhyming text hums along pleasantly, repeating the same four words at the beginning of each stanza, as in Every day, everywhere, babies play games--peek-a-boo, pat-a-cake, this-little-piggy, roll-the-ball, ride-the-horse, jiggety-jiggy. Parents will appreciate that the art has not only multicultural representation but also includes a mother breastfeeding, along with the usual pictures of infants fed from bottles. The many moods, expressions, and body movements of babies are faithfully, gracefully rendered in the pencil drawings, and brightened with watercolors in rather muted hues. Small children will find plenty of action and detail to lure them into the illustrations, which will validate their experiences by showing familiar activities and equipment. A charming and sometimes amusing representation of babyhood.

Cheerful rhythmic verse captions sunny portraits and vignettes celebrating babies in all their multiplicity. Babies are kissed, fed, or rocked in a wealth of domestic scenes whose affectionate good humor and adroit evocation of the universals of child care call to mind the vivid social commentaries of Shirley Hughes. Warm, funny, generous, this is a book that belongs in every library, and every lap.

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)

PreS Chubby-cheeked cherubs are cuddled, kissed, and cared for by their adoring loved ones in this buoyant celebration of babyhood. Ebullient rhymes and watercolors brimming with affection and expression detail the small wonders of a newborn's first year. (May)