How You Were Born by Joanna Cole (Harper Collins, 1994) is unlike the other books I’ve read by Joanna Cole. This book is illustrated with photographs of babies in utero, newborn babies, and happy families, as well as with a few illustrations and diagrams. It’s also written for slightly older children.
Although the words are quite similar to those found in When You Were Inside Mommy (reviewed here), my son didn’t want to read this book: he wanted to look at the pictures and tell me the story. Here’s how he described the pregnancy process to me after reading these two preliminary “how a baby grows” books.
“Some of the Mommy and some of the Daddy make a baby a small as a dot!” he explained to me. “And then the baby grows and grows and grows in Mommy’s uterus until it’s finally time. Then Mommy’s muscles push out the baby.”
I’m pretty pleased with how clear it is to him, given that he’s not yet four years old. (That said, I do believe he still thinks the baby comes out of my belly button…)
