First Comes Love

Every parent awaits the question: Where do babies come from? First Comes Love is a charming introduction to the birds and the bees, not to mention alligators, spiders, dragonflies, squirrels, peacocks, and--of course--people.

Illustrated by Clare Mackie, whose clever visual jokes and whimsical flourishes will appeal as much to grown-ups as they do to children, the book marries fun rhyming text with fascinating fact to tell a story of love, courtship, and birth across the animal kingdom. Written for the ages of 4 to 8, when kids are at their most curious and least embarrassed, here is the story of the lightning bug-"When the firefly is in a flirting mode, / He scribbles and blinks a special code." The penguin--"Quivering and caressing with flippers and beaks, /They touch and talk for two full weeks." And the kangaroo--"Kangaroo babies are rarely seen, / Because they're no bigger than a lima bean." Then below, in captions that amplify the verse, kids learn that every firefly species has its own blinking language, that penguins try to find the same mate year after year, and that a new-born kangaroo stays in his mother's pouch for the first three months.

Jennifer Davis, a mother of four, wrote Before You Were Born to answer the questions her older kids asked while she was pregnant. She lives in Beaufort, South Carolina.