Baby Animals - Hardcover

Margaret Wise Brown

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241129788 ISBN 13: 9780241129784

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1991

Synopsis

Relates the morning, noon, and evening activities of several young animals and a little girl.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

PreSchool-- Originally published in 1941, Baby Animals is written in the same lulling style as many of Brown's familiar, quiet picture books. It tells of a typical day for each animal--lamb, pig, puppy, kitten, horse, bird--on a small farm. This new, larger version has been edited and modernized. The original included some wild creatures (a flounder and some bear cubs) that have been omitted from the new edition. The text has been updated (i.e., the child's heavy lunch of meat, potatoes, juice, vegetables, and dessert has been changed to a light lunch of soup, milk, and dessert; sexist allusions--"it is nighttime, and the fathers are coming home"--are gone). Mary Cameron's outdated pictures for the original edition have been replaced by Jeffers' familiar, colorful watercolor and pen-and-ink paintings which capture, in true picture-book style, a modern black family's farm day. Paintings and text are interspersed on each page, creating a lovely whole. Illustrations range from full-page and double-page spreads to several smaller ones on a page surrounded by crisp white space. Young children will delight in the lilting, often repetitive, question-and-answer format of the text. Despite several flaws (size relationships are not always correct; far too many sentences begin with and and but ), this new edition of Brown's long out-of-print title will find a ready audience in those same young readers who enjoy her other books. --Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, Ohio
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

"It is morning, and everything is waking up. / Birds are waking up the way birds wake up. / Pigs are waking up the way pigs wake up. / And children are waking up too." A black girl in a farmhouse has breakfast and gets dressed before helping her parents feed and care for the lambs, puppies and kittens that have also just begun their day. While the baby animals are eating lunch, the girl eats, too. And in the evening, everyone--baby animals and child--must go to sleep. Brown's story, first published in 1941, has the same comforting repetition found in Good night Moon , although this text is much longer. Jeffers's watercolor illustrations, with detailed work in ink, let readers join the reassuring world where animals and children are loved and cared for. The juxtaposition of pictures and white space to text, and the use of soft, spring-like colors, give the design a spacious, welcoming look. Ages 3-6.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0241129788
• ISBN 13: 9780241129784
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Susan Jeffers