Out of Everywhere Into Here

What do you give a newborn boy,

With eyes that twinkle full of joy?

A bundle of books just his size,

Full of wonder, love and surprise.

Click the links below for reviews of four board books "for now and to grow on." Or scroll down the page!

This New Baby by Teddy Jam

It's a Little Book by Lane Smith

A Box of Bugs by David Carter
You Are My Cupcake by Joyce Wan

This New Baby

Written by Teddy Jam

Paintings by Virginia Johnson

Groundwood Books, 2011

$8.95 (board book), 22 pages

A mother watches her newborn, and wonders about all that he sees and feels in this tender poem originally published in 1999 as a picture book. 

"This new baby / sleeps in my arms / like a moon / sleeping on a cloud," the mother muses, as she holds him close, her face touching his.

Later, she says, as he drifts into a dreamworld in father's lap, he's "like a hawk drifting through the sky."

For a time the baby's still, then something stirs inside him, disquiets him, "the sound of hawks' wings lifting," and he lets out a cry, deep from inside.

You Are My Cupcake

Written & illustrated by Joyce Wan

Scholastic, 2011

$6.99 (board book), 14 pages

Babies have us the moment we see them. One look at those cheeks and eyes, and we get all melty inside.

And when they're our babies? Well, we think we'll burst from happiness, or as the idiom curiously goes, we'll "just  eat them up," every little toe.

In this adorable board book, Wan plays off that familiar expression and the intoxicating feeling we get from babies with names we reach for to show our affection.