Baby Says “Moo” by JoAnn Early Macken and illustrated by David Walker (Hyperion, March 2011) is a humorous story of a young baby who cannot yet distinguish between the different animal sounds, but rather insists that each animal says “Moo.” As a family drives toward their picnic destination, they see different animals from the car windows.
I loved this “moo” silliness for a personal reason: when my son was still quite young, he insisted that while grown up pigs say “Oink,” baby pigs say “pig pig.” It was quite cute. Now, being a big four-year-old boy, he knows the “proper” animal sounds, of course. Never the less, he still enjoyed reading the rhyming verse and yelling “MOO!” whenever it was (finally) baby’s turn to talk. I love the uncomplicated and colorful illustrations: they matched the tone of the text perfectly.
Because I have the wonderful honor of being a Round 1 Judge for the Fiction Picture Books, I get to read about 200 books published in the last year that have been nominated. To help me keep track of my thoughts on the books I’ve read and in order to share the love of books with each of you, I’m going to try to post on a few of the fun books each week.
This week, since my own baby girl will be born sometime near the end of February, I thought it might be fun to look at some books somehow related to babies and birthdays.
What baby picture books have you enjoyed?
