By Lucy Cousins
A little mouse who's thrilled about a new baby, right up until the baby arrives and takes every scrap of the grown-ups' attention.
Za-Za is a small mouse waiting happily for her baby brother. Then he's born, and everything Za-Za pictured falls flat: the baby doesn't play, he cries a lot, and Mommy is too tired and too busy to do much with Za-Za at all. Za-Za feels left out and says so. Slowly, with help from family who come to visit and give her time, she finds her own place beside the baby. Lucy Cousins, who made Maisy, paints it in big bold shapes and bright flat color a toddler can read across the room.
This is the one that names the specific let-down of a new baby: not that they arrived, but that they turned out to be so little and so demanding that the whole house tilted toward them. Za-Za feels sidelined, honestly and out loud, and then gets helped back to the middle of things. Give it to the child who expected a playmate and got a lump who cries, and needs to see that the feeling is normal and passes.