Review by Booklist Review
PreS-Gr. 1. Caldecott Medal-winner Rathman tries something different here, but she isn't altogether successful. The exuberant text is directed to a young boy with the rescuing sensibility of Holden Caufield, who catches wandering babies: Remember the way / You tried to save the day? / You hollered, HEY! / You babies, Stay! Alas, none of them do; instead they crawl off to chase bees and scramble onto a ledge. The fun is in the oversize pictures with silhouette images set against gloriously colored, subtly shaded backgrounds. These illustrations, reminiscent of the art in Jan Pienkowski's books about Christmas and Easter, may be difficult for little children to absorb. Not only must kids read details into the flat, black silhouettes, but they will also find that some objects are so small they are hard to discern. In addition, though the text is peppy, it can be difficult to read aloud. Is the book worth buying? Yes. The conceit is clever, the artwork is creative and lovely, and children with patience and imagination will find a bit more to see than they might find in a book with conventional art. --Ilene Cooper Copyright 2003 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Rathmann (Officer Buckle and Gloria) makes an innovative departure from her usual prose and pictures in this rollicking rhyming tale, illustrated in needle-sharp, atmospheric silhouettes against twilight skies. The initial spreads picture a lively neighborhood picnic and pie-eating contest with fluttering banners and an all-ages crowd. In voiceover, a parent reminisces about how "you" represented here as a boy in a firefighter's helmet had to "save the day ... When the babies crawled away!" The speaker admits she was caught off-guard: "We moms and dads were eating pies, The babies saw some butterflies And what do you know? Surprise! Surprise! The babies crawled away!" The adults do not witness their five babies' escape. But the alert boy notices, vainly tugs at his mother's shirt, then chases the runaways into a thicket: "You hollered, `Hey! You babies, stay!' But none of them did. And some of them hid." The babies' shadowy figures never seem endangered; they blend with the tangled shapes of the branches, creating a hide-and-seek puzzle for their pursuer and for readers. Yet the boy senses their peril and consistently comes to the rescue. Rathmann's signature palette of zingy pink, lemon yellow and robin's egg blue deepen to sunset colors that imply time is tight; the flattened foreground includes a hillside with every blade of grass in stark relief, and the cavorting shapes of the children. Rathmann's poem never misses a beat, and her triumphant finale does not pass judgment on the parents; instead she praises the sleepy, baby-wrangling hero. Ages 2-6. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-A pint-sized do-gooder goes to great lengths to round up a bunch of renegade babies who have wandered off and returns them to their parents. Marvelous backlit silhouettes convey the drama and the humor in this sublime slice of inspired silliness. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Preschool) While the grownups are taking part in a pie-eating contest, only a preschooler-ish boy wearing a firefighter helmet notices when ""the babies"" crawl away, following a swarm of butterflies. The rhyming story of the babies' adventure is told inside the framework of a mother reminding her son, the preschool boy with the hat, what happened: ""Remember the way / You tried to save the day? / You hollered, 'HEY! / You babies, STAY!' / But none of them did. / And some of them hid. / I SAY! / What a day / When the babies crawled away!"" The babies crawl after bees and frogs and bats, all with the boy following, trying to avert disaster. They finally get tired and hungry, so he ""mashed them some blackberries / With droplets of dew"" and lets them take a little nap before he figures out a way to get them all back to their parents. After a joyous celebration with fireworks, he then gets to fall a sleep in his mother's arms. Rathmann uses an old-fashioned style of illustration in a new and dramatic way, telling the story through black silhouettes set against a glowing neon sky. The style isolates the important parts of the tale, highlighting each gesture and detail Rathmann wants us to see and eliminating everything extraneous. There are many repeating motifs for children to seek out in each spread, and viewers will notice many details missed earlier when they go through the book a second time. The theme of this fresh, original book appeals, too, as the young would-be firefighter gets to be the hero. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Caldecott Medalist Rathmann scores again with this rhymed tale of a child's struggles to chaperone a wayward flock of errant babies, illustrated in vivacious, finely-cut silhouettes. With the parents distracted by a pie-eating contest, only a small lad in a firefighter's helmet notices that five babies have crawled away from the picnic. Fruitlessly waving an admonitory finger, he follows as they clamber into a thick stand of trees, through a bog, into a cave, and over a cliff, collapsing at last for a nap in their exhausted pursuer's lap before letting him lead them back to joyful reunions. Posed against brilliantly lambent skies, each opaque, realistically rendered figure, from babies to butterflies and blades of grass, stands out distinctly; even the youngest viewers will have no trouble keeping track of who's up to what. Rathmann tucks in plenty of visual byplay and jokes, and brings the episode to a cozy close with the lad curled up in his own mother's lap. At least as inventive and captivating as 10 Minutes Till Bedtime, this is bound to be a similar hit with children. (Picture book. 5-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
