Hello Baby!
A teacher’s look at why this book belongs in the Lap Listeners stage.
Why it fits Lap Listeners (for babies in their first year, when books are about your voice, not the plot)
A guessing-game rhyme that ends with the best answer of all: the baby on your lap. Animal faces build to the mirror moment infants adore. A gentle 'who are you?' with a perfect payoff.
What makes it special
Fox's guessing-game rhyme builds to the oldest reveal in the world: the baby themselves. Steve Jenkins' torn-paper animals are tactile-looking enough that babies try to pet the pages. It ends every reading with the child affirmed as 'my treasure' — a closing line worth a thousand reads.
From the publisher
A parent questions a child about which kind of animal it…
About Mem Fox
Mem Fox is Australia's best-known picture-book author and spent 24 years as an associate professor of literacy education — her books are engineered, syllable by syllable, from what she taught about how children acquire language. Reading Magic, her guide for parents, is a modern classic on reading aloud.
Raised in Zimbabwe by missionary parents, Fox wrote her first book, Possum Magic, as a college assignment; it was rejected nine times, then became the best-selling Australian children's book in history.
Also by this author: Possum Magic · Where Is the Green Sheep? · Koala Lou
More from “Faces Like Mine, Faces Like Yours”
This book is part of The Best Books for Babies: 30 Teacher Picks (Lap Listeners) in our guide The Best Children’s Books by Age — 120 books chosen by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX. Come see how we build readers →
Nobody paid for this review — not the author, not the publisher — and the store link above earns us nothing. Our only interest is the reader this book fits.