Barron's first picture book as author and illustrator is a love song to babies and toddlers that new parents may well end up memorizing from frequent reading. It draws parallels between human children and the animal shapes their small bodies make as they go about their baby lives. As baby reaches for the mobile above his crib, Barron sees him as a kitten batting its paws at a butterfly just out of reach; as another draws her legs up on the changing table, she becomes a hedgehog baby, all curled up; and as a little girl crawls around on the beach, she resembles a young turtle. Some readers may not appreciate the comparison of human babies to animals, but there is much love in these analogies that take note of the sweet, small ways babies are adorable. Gently rhyming text makes for smooth, melodic reading that might be useful at bedtime. Beautiful cut-paper collages depict the animals and multiethnic babies in similar postures wning like a hippo, bouncing like a froggy. A sweet read-aloud for little ones.

Children's movements and activities are compared with animals' as seen through a caregiver's eyes. Barron's paper-collage illustrations depict the motion of an animal alongside a child who moves, plays, or wiggles in the same way. Four-line rhyming stanzas accompany each two-page spread, with the animal and the text against a white background on the left and a full-color illustration of the child on the right. The action of each layout is a true match between animal and child; a baby crawls through the sand as a turtle drags itself to the sea, for instance. It is refreshing to see a smiling black baby on the cover as well as a nicely diverse cast of children and caregivers within. Barron's collages are gorgeous. A particular standout, of a father and baby bundled up in the snow opposite a pair of emperor penguins, conveys depth and texture. Each piece of each illustration has a specific place and purpose. The text, however, falls short of the illustrations. Some stanzas have a nice rhythm and rhyme, while others read awkwardly, padded with animal sounds that seem to have been inserted as filler for lack of words to fit rhyme and scansion: "You're just like a duckling, / Riding on my back. / Splishing and splashing around the pool, / Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack!" This one is worth it just for the illustrations even if the text falls behind. (Picture book. 2-4)

Barron compares the ways that human and animal babies interact with others, play, snack, and cuddle. A gray kitten gently bats at a yellow butterfly just as an infant touches the butterfly on a mobile: -Baby, you-re just like a kitten,/ Reaching up so high.- As two bears hug, a woman offers a reassuring embrace as her child slips in the autumn leaves: -Baby, you-re a bear cub,/ Toddling on two feet.- A baby in a bathtub clutches a plastic toy while an otter baby holds a purple sea urchin on its chest. Barron-s friendly collage illustrations have a shapely, multidimensional look that readers will want to reach out and touch, and they show appreciable similarities between babies of all sorts. Ages up to 3. (Mar.)