Sweet Baby Feet

by Margaret O'Hair, Tracy Dockray (Illustrator)

Overview

Snuggly Baby,

Oh, so sweet.

Love those

Bouncy Baby Feet!

Who can resist Baby's feet? In a gently humorous tale, follow along as Baby wakes up, gets dressed, eats breakfast, paints, runs, takes a bath, and exhausts Mama.

Simple rhymes and joyful illustrations capture the easy rhythms of a morning shared by a mother and child.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374373481
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	11/13/2012
Pages:	28
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.48(d)
Age Range:	1 - 3 Years

About the Author

Margaret O'Hair is the author of several picture books. She is a teacher in northern California, where she also lives. Tracy Dockray has written and/or illustrated many books for children, including Jammy Dance by Rebecca Janni and the new editions of the Beezus and Ramona books. She lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

PreS—Is there anything cuter than baby feet? Not in this sweet, rhyming story about a new walker and her activities during the course of a day. As she eats, dresses, plays, and bathes, she is watched with various amounts of alarm, ruefulness, and pleasure by her mother and pet cat and dog. Whether wearing socks and shoes or stomping or wiggling bare toes, the youngster is fully engaged. The puppy joyfully participates in her messier activities while the cat tends to be more of an observer. The brief rhymes give just enough description to allow Dockray to portray the action while adding plenty of humor. Soft- focus, vibrantly colored illustrations perfectly convey the variety in Baby's day. Each spread successfully evinces movement through both text and illustration so that references to previous pages appear frequently. A lovely sharing book for parents and young children.—B. Allison Gray, Goleta Public Library, CA

School Library Journal

So sweet it just might make your teeth hurt, though there's not much to chew on. O'Hair and Dockray's day-in-the-toddler-life collaboration follows Baby's busy day with rhyming text that preserves meter by locking readers into a singsong rhythm. "Mama's there. / Never misses / When she gives / Baby kisses." Mama is exhausted by day's end, but Baby (now clad in pajamas) is raring to go. Perhaps Mama is so tired because she's been alone with her rambunctious child all day: A father appears in an early picture, reading the newspaper, dressed for work, briefcase by his side and looking aghast as Baby makes a mess at her highchair while Mama sweetly smiles. Unmentioned in the text, the only other time he appears is in a washed-out family portrait hanging on the wall. Illustrations also add unmentioned pets but otherwise stay tied to the text without elevating or extending it. Worse yet, the cover art sadly presents an awkwardly rendered depiction of the all-important "sweet baby feet," which here look out of proportion and poorly drawn, especially compared to other picture-book paeans to feet--Kiyomi Konagaya and Masamitsu Saito's Beach Feet (2012), and C.W. Bowie and Fred Willingham's Busy Toes (1998), to name just a pair. Step on by this one--similar, better books abound. (Picture book. 6 mos.-3)

Kirkus Reviews