Baby Be

by Alison McGhee, Sean Qualls (Illustrator)

Overview

Dads of all varieties bounce and groove with their babies, letting them know the best thing they can be is themselves, in this exuberant picture book ode to the joy of fatherhood.

Baby!
High five!
Down low!
You ready?
Let’s go!

Dads got moves! Dads got grooves. From shoulder rides to sleepy time snuggles, dads have their own special relationships with their babies, their own way of showing their great big love for one another, and those beats, those boogies, those moments together will live in their hearts forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534405400
Publisher:	Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
File size:	127 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Alison McGhee is the New York Times bestselling author of Someday, as well as Dear Sister, What I Leave Behind, Pablo and Birdy, Where We Are, Maybe a Fox with Kathi Appelt, Firefly Hollow, Little Boy, So Many Days, Star Bright, A Very Brave Witch, Dear Brother, and the Bink and Gollie books. Her other children’s books include All Rivers Flow to the Sea, Countdown to Kindergarten, and Snap!. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Laguna Beach, California. You can visit her at AlisonMcGhee.com.

Sean Qualls’s work is a mixed media combination of painting, drawing, and collage. He has illustrated many picture books, including Before John Was a Jazz Giant, which received a Coretta Scott King Honor Award; The Poet Slave of Cuba, a BCCB Blue Ribbon Book; Dizzy, an ALA Notable Book and a Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and Child Magazine best book, as well as BCCB Blue Ribbon Book and a Booklist Editor’s Choice; and Emmanuel’s Dream, which was a Schneider Award winner and an Amazon Best Book of the Month. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. 

Editorial Reviews

09/04/2023

Rocking rhyme accompanies images of mostly bearded caregivers spending time with small children throughout this energetic picture book. The adult-child duos make the most of ordinary places in which they find themselves—on the sofa, at the park, in the store. Together, they experiment with playing guitar (“Your drumming,/ my strumming”), pounding on pots and pans in a kitchen (“Your beats./ My treats”), dancing to music played on vinyl (“You show me your drop;/ I’ll show you my flop”), and letting loose at a supermarket (“My boogie,/ your woogie”). Working in textured acrylic paint, colored pencil, and collage, Qualls (Frances in the Country) portrays the twosomes with various skin tones and hair textures; incorporates kinetic-feeling movement that tracks with the text; and includes background bubbles, stars, and wafting ribbons that seem to represent music and sound. In equally energetic words, McGhee (World So Wide) celebrates unconditional love, not just for an infant’s actions or potential, but for their existence in the present moment. Singing, yelling, and dancing, each adult hints, it’s all “already perfect to me.” Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Sara Crowe, Sara Crowe Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Holly McGhee, Pippin Properties. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 10/01/2023

Baby-Toddler—Qualls's outstanding textured, mixed-media illustrations perfectly complement McGhee's rhyming and rhythmic affirmation of all that is baby. A diverse cast of male-presenting caregivers are shown enjoying time with their babies while doing a variety of activities—cooking, dancing, jamming on pots and pans and guitar, and giving high fives. Collage work using a variety of papers, including text-print with an overlay of what look like gelatin plate-printed textures in blues, yellows, pinks, and purples add grit to this joy-filled world while snappy wordplay—"your beats, my treats" and "your grand plié, my petit jeté"—will keep baby's ears as happy as their eyes. This is a perfect baby/toddler story time read-aloud that lets babies of every race and age know that they are perfect for just being. Tender and loving, without a hint of sappy. VERDICT Highly recommended for all collections.—Hillary Perelyubskiy

School Library Journal

2023-08-12
A celebration of the bonds between caregivers and their children.

This rhyming picture book opens with an image of a young child and a parent winking and trading high fives in a meadow. As the narrative continues, readers get a window into the lives of numerous other pairings of babies and male-presenting caretakers: a bearded adult in a hat and tracksuit spinning records for a dancing child, a bearded caregiver in a durag fastening a tie around a child’s neck, and a bespectacled, aproned caretaker dancing to the beat a child plays on a set of pots and pans. Written from the point of view of an adult speaking to a child, the book relies on a deliciously fun choice of words: “My wiggle, / your woggle. / My swing, / and your zing.” The book ends with the adult’s assurance that the child is perfect just the way they are and that they should continue to “just BE.” The takeaway is clear—the adult will support this treasured little one no matter what life brings. The exuberant text and whimsical illustrations, rendered in colored pencil, collage, and acrylic, make for a sweetly energetic read-aloud. The pictures feature characters with a variety of skin tones and hair textures. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A tender, lyrical offering conveying a message of unconditional love. (Picture book. 1-3)

Kirkus Reviews