Summary
This charming and reassuring book enables a child and a grown-up friend or parent to share the excitement, bewilderment, and possible problems associated with having a new baby in the house.
Published Reviews
Booklist Review:
"PreS. For the very youngest comes a book that is straightforward, simple, and sweet. The round-faced boy holding his infant sibling on the cover is the one learning about what a baby in the house means. The text states the new situation with clarity: Babies need to sleep a lot. You sometimes have to be quiet . . . The pastel pictures personalize and expand the thought as the boy looks disconsolately at his drum while the baby sleeps in the background. Everybody seems to love the baby, is shown to be true as baby is being cuddled and the boy slips away. However, the real message comes near the end of the book: But all tiny babies are little persons who need people to love them. Love helps them learn about smiling and talking . . . about helping and playing . . . caring and sharing. Rock makes it clear that love is what binds the new family together, a message that will resonate even with the toddler crowd. --Ilene Cooper Copyright 2005 Booklist"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review:
"Rock (A Child's First Book of Prayers) offers words of wisdom for youngsters facing two watershed events: the birth of a sibling and the death of a loved one. She's well served by the very different styles of her two illustrators in these paper-over-board volumes. In Now We Have a Baby, she directly and succinctly mirrors children's emotions in single sentences. "Sometimes you can feel left out," the author acknowledges, while Massey (the Touch & Fit series), working in comforting, velvety pastels and simple shapes, portrays a preschooler sitting by himself on a staircase, looking wistful. But the second half assures readers that their love teaches an infant important skills (smiling, sharing) and helps make "a baby part of our family, for a family is love." When Good-Bye Is Forever takes a much different approach-the success of which may depend on readers' religious upbringing. After reminding youngsters that life is filled with good-byes, Rock addresses the finality of death with analogy ("Sometimes death comes unexpectedly, like a frost that kills the spring flowers"), homespun philosophy ("Into the empty space of good-bye will come the memories of happy times") and faith-based language ("Loved ones who die pass on to a new beginning... We call that place heaven, where God makes all things new"). The author's earnestness is never in doubt, but the book is little more than a laundry list of homilies. It's the contemplative, stylized realism of Moxley's (Elephant Dance) artwork that shapes the pages into a cohesive whole, eloquently conveying a mood of loss, longing and acceptance. Ages 2-5; Forever 3-8. (Nov. 2004) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved"
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
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