Welcoming Babies - Softcover

Burns Knight, Margy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0884481247 ISBN 13: 9780884481249

Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers, 2003

Synopsis

Welcoming Babies shows the diverse ways we treasure new life around the world―the routines and rituals of a child’s first year.

As we read about babies from tiny Luke, who is spending his first days of life in an incubator, to Kasa, who is being introduced to the sunrise by her grandmother, we realize that there are many different―and yet strikingly similar―ways to welcome babies.

About this title

About the Author

MARGY BURNS KNIGHT received the National Education Association’s Author-Illustrator Human & Civil Rights Award for her work with Anne Sibley O’Brien and the Children’s Africana Book Award for Africa Is Not a Country. She is the author of Talking Walls, which has sold more than 200,000 copies. She writes a blog, “Discover Your World,” and is a Service Learning Coordinator, an English teacher, and a Peace Corps veteran.

ANNE SIBLEY O’BRIEN has illustrated 31 books, including Talking Walls, and is the author and illustrator of the picture book I’m New Here and the graphic novel The Legend of Hong Kil Dong. Annie’s passion for multiracial, multicultural, and global subjects grew out of her experience of being raised bilingual and bicultural in South Korea as the daughter of medical missionaries. She writes the column “The Illustrator’s Perspective” for the Bulletin of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and a blog, “Coloring Between the Lines.” The mother of two grown children, she lives with her husband on an island in Maine.

From Publishers Weekly

"Every day, everywhere, babies are born. We have many ways to show them we are glad they came into the world." So opens this well-meaning if somewhat artificial round-up of the ways in which people of various cultures celebrate the arrival of a newborn and other childhood milestones. "We Sing," writes Knight as O'Brien shows an African baby being welcomed by the song of women, who, the text tells us, will be joined by other villagers to herald the child's birth. Subsequent spreads reveal a tiny baby in an incubator being caressed by a parent's hand ("We Touch"); a midwife placing a drop of sugar butter onto the tongue of a dark-haired infant "so that he will have a sweet life" ("We Bless"); a christening party for Ricardo, where the guests wear encintados, colorful ribbons with the names of the baby and his godparents; and the first birthday celebration for Ok-hee, pictured in front of a table laden with food ("Those who treasure her gather to wish Ok-hee a long and happy life"). At its best, O'Brien's hazy, pastel art depicts endearing scenarios, but often the images are stilted and unaffecting. Ages 5-up.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0884481247
• ISBN 13: 9780884481249
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40
• Illustrator: Sibley O'Brien Anne