Babies on the Go

Plenty of animal babies stagger about on bowed, spindly legs mere moments after birth, but plenty more are lovingly carried by their mothers for a long while. Linda Ashman’s Babies on the Go, featuring Jane Dyer’s sweet, mama-and-baby watercolors, highlights 20 animals, among them a tiny swan nestled on her mother’s back, a lioness carefully carrying her cub by the scruff of his neck, and a septet of baby opossum clinging to their mama’s fur. (It's probably the most appealing opossum illustration anywhere.) Ashman (Castles, Caves, and Honeycombs, Rub-a-Dub Sub)and Dyer, acclaimed illustrator of Mem Fox’s Time for Bed, have created a rhythmic poem and picture book that is certain to captivate a whole new crop of mothers carrying and wearing their babies everywhere: "It doesn’t matter how they go. / Inside…outside…fast…or slow. / On the ground or high above, / babies always ride with love." (Baby to preschool) --Jennifer Lindsay