Ten Tiny Toes by Todd Tarpley and illustrated by Marc Brown (Little, Brown 2012) begins with the ten tiny toes coming in to the world “a hundred times sweeter than one could suppose.” The text is sweetly rhyming: not annoying at all and full of baby-friendly metaphors and rhythm that makes it a delight to read aloud.
The story follows the ten toes as they stumble and learn to walk, as they go trick-or-treating, and as the person who belongs to the toes grows up to raise their own children. Marc Brown’s collage illustrations are adorable. As a mother, I loved it. My baby girl cooed all through it too.
This week’s Cybils’ focus is on babies! Since my baby is quickly getting old (she’ll be ten months old next week), I’m mourning the loss of a not-yet-crawling baby, but looking forward to coming months of a baby who is more interested in playing and reading with me! She obviously already loves books by the way she devours them (literally trying to eat them, which is of course perfectly age appropriate!).
There are many more new sibling and baby books in the Cybils stack, and it is unfortunate that I will not have time to discuss all of them. My Cybils time is coming to an end, as I’ve just spent a marathon two and a half months reading through 234 out of the 237 on the fiction picture book list. I’ll keep reviewing as much as I can in the coming months, but know that there are far more books on the list than I will ever get to!
