Be a Baby

by Sarah Withrow, Manuel Monroy (Illustrations)

Babies are fascinated with other babies. They can spend hours looking at images of creatures like themselves. In this delightful book, little ones find an enchanting baby with whom they can identify in all their moods — happy, sad, crying, sleepy, and even asleep. Award-winning author Sarah Withrow's irrestible text is a joy for parents to read and sure to lull babies into a peaceful sleep. Manual Monroy's illustrations are a perfect depiction of an adorable cuddly baby and readers enjoy looking at familiar objects such as toys, bananas, blankets, and pets.

32 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Sarah Withrow started writing her rollicking pre-/post-apocalyptic road trip novels in 2021 after retiring from a 17-year career as a Communications Officer.

From 1998 to 2007, she published four novels for young adults and a baby book. Her YA book Bat Summer, was shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award and has been published in seven countries. Her short stories for adults have also appeared in several Canadian literary journals during this first kick at the can. (None of these stories have cell phones in them.)

Sarah lives in Kingston, Ontario with her luxury-sized cats Gloria and Melman. In addition to writing dystopian novels, she enjoys coffee, walking, yoga, cooking, TikTok and non-serious crafts.

Reviews

[Slytano · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is mildly terrifying to babies. And youth librarians.

According to the publisher, "This new lullaby for the very young is destined to become a picture-book classic."

According to Jason Slayton, It is destined to be weeded.

[Laura Gibbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was the sweetest of all summarized. Although it’s longer than most, when it’s read to infants, I think it would be really beneficial to them because it provides things that are said and pictures that infants could relate to—especially once babies start to see and realize other babies around them. The book is about the things that babies can do—but in a sweeter, motherly way. It has an imaginative twist on it, and the author writes to do things like “Be a dancing flower, be a tired tree. Or be a cloud up in the sky and make it rain on me.” There are metaphors used in the book, but the pictures match the metaphors; for example-the page that talks about raining on me, there is a picture of a baby crying on the opposite page. I could imagine this book being read to an infant just before bed while he or she is being rocked!
I liked this book a lot, but it may be one that needs to be read to an “older” infant. The pictures are very bright and they have lots of sweetly drawn pictures. As far as classroom uses, I feel like it’s a very calm book to read to a baby who might be upset. Thematically, it could be used when talking about babies.

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Be a bowl of pudding and I'll eat you with a spoon" I used that line on my bf