By John Burningham
A mother and her small child talk over the long months before a new baby comes, and the child is allowed to feel every doubt out loud.
Across a whole pregnancy, a little boy and his mother talk about the baby who's on the way. He wonders what the baby will do, what it might grow up to be, a cook, a gardener, a painter, a zookeeper. He also says, plainly, that maybe they don't want a baby at all, and that he'd like to send it back. His mother never scolds him for it. By the end his grandfather helps him imagine loving the baby, and he's ready. Helen Oxenbury's soft watercolors carry the whole slow, honest conversation.
This is the honest one on the shelf. Where other new-baby books rush to the happy part, this book lets your child sit in the not-sure part first, out loud, with a mother who takes it in stride. That's what makes the warm ending land, they got there on their own instead of being told how to feel. Give it to the thoughtful child who needs their worry acknowledged before they can get excited.