Floor it!

Toddler-K--A crawling baby embarks on an epic indoor adventure, transforming the living room into a high-speed obstacle course. The imaginative premise turns couch cushions into mountains, rugs into forests, and puddles into peril, all framed through the baby's point of view. Fine's tight, bouncy rhyme carries the action with momentum and clarity, capturing both the humor and determination of early mobility. The racing metaphor is playful and relatable, elevating everyday baby exploration into a grand imaginative feat. The use of they/them pronouns for the baby and the neutral "parent's knee" in the ending reflect a quietly inclusive, non-gendered approach to family. Fabiani's vibrant mixed-media illustrations combine traditional and digital techniques, creating rich textures that ooze playfulness. The warm palette, with pops of orange, navy, and chartreuse, blends imaginative visuals with real-world living room terrain in ways young readers will find familiar and fantastical. Moments of support from a sibling and codriver pet reinforce themes of independence within a loving, observant family. A final lift into a parent's arms brings closure and reassurance, suggesting that exploration and security can go hand in hand. VERDICT A joyful romp that celebrates toddlerhood's grandest adventures, this is a strong addition to collections serving the youngest readers and their copilots.--Rose Garrett

An infant's crawl across the living room turns into a fantastical, perspective-shifting racing adventure. A red-helmeted baby races across a living room that's been recast as an epic racetrack, with furniture and other ordinary objects becoming forests, mountains, and waterways. Encouraged by an older sibling ("Baby, start your engine…crawl!"), the determined infant navigates obstacles, makes pit stops, and presses onward to the finish line. Tobin Fine's racing terminology (straightaway,stalls) creates an effective sports-announcer rhythm that propels the narrative forward, while the consistent rhyming text keeps the momentum going throughout. Fabiani's child-friendly mixed-media illustrations skillfully depict the dual perspective--both the actual living room and the way the baby sees it. The compositions play with scale, transforming a parquet floor and fluffy carpeting into vast terrains from Baby's viewpoint. In one particularly effective spread, Fabiani frames Baby's vision through a helmet-shaped portal with dashboardlike indicators below, cleverly simulating how the world might appear through a racer's visor, reinforcing Baby's imaginative point of view while maintaining the book's racing theme. Worth noting is the text's consistent use ofthey/them pronouns for the baby and nongendered descriptions of family members ("Parked right on their parent's knee, / Baby's where they're meant to be"). Characters are pale-skinned. Buckle up for this intrepid crawler's quest--a rhyming ride with a racing twist.(Picture book. 3-7) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.