Overview

Being big is hard. Sometimes you want to do the baby things you used to do before! In this funny journey of discovery, one little girl decides to try out being a baby again, but discovers it is more fun being the big sister of the family.

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9781512439472

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A little girl faces a big reality: there's a new baby in the house, and her status has changed. Readers can tell how much she wants to regress back to babyhood when she makes up the Baby Big Girl Game. First, she squeezes herself back into her old crib. Then she tries to jam herself back into her favorite baby clothes. The counterpoint to these desperate efforts is the reassurance the girl gets from mother, father, and grandmother that being a big girl is much more fun. Eventually, she starts noticing some perks--better food, no diapers, a forward-facing car seat. The pastel illustrations and gentle rhymes work to reassure young readers, until the girl, at last, starts to feel a sort of superior compassion for her helpless baby brother. An especially good feature here is how the mixed racial background of this family (an African American mother, a Caucasian father) is presented matter-of-factly. Nora Gaydos' I'm a New Big Brother (2010) or Karen Katz's Now I'm Big! (2013) make good follow-ups. --Booklist --Journal The addition of a new baby is life-changing for every member of a family and can be especially challenging for a sibling. Rhyming text and playful, cartoonlike illustrations tell the story of welcoming a new sibling from the point of view of a big sister. At first, she regresses and wants to wear her baby clothing and sleep in her old baby bed, but her parents lovingly encourage her to be a 'big girl, ' and she delights in the ability to do things that her baby brother cannot. Though this is incidental to the story line, the narrator is part of an interracial family and background characters are also diverse. Briticisms, such as 'Mummy' and 'nappy, ' used throughout may cause a bit of confusion but will not deter readers. VERDICT Recommended for general purchase, especially for picture book collections in need of new baby and sibling-to-be titles. --School Library Journal --Journal Rhyming text and exuberant art follows a little girl in an interracial family getting used to her status as big sister. The narrator has brown skin and tightly curled black hair in small braids with bows. Her mother and baby brother share her skin color and hair texture, but her father, her grandmother, and a friend are white. Race is unmentioned in the text, which introduces the girl's 'baby big girl game, ' in which she playfully regresses and tries to wear her old baby clothes and squeeze into her baby bed. Her parents lovingly affirm her big-girl status, and while she seems a bit conflicted, other spreads show her decided enjoyment at doing things her baby brother cannot. Several British words and phrases ('Mummy' and 'nappy, ' for example) are retained in the American editions of this picture book; this cultural specificity adds to its appeal, though there are times when the rhyme doesn't work particularly well, and it never seems essential to the book's success. A child's narration is often difficult to achieve without a sense of adult ventriloquism, and the rhyme makes this yet more fraught. A warm if at times stilted celebration of all things big girl. --Kirkus Reviews --Journal

Author Information

Anthea Simmons grew up in Cornwall where she was pony- and book-mad. She lives in East Devon with (during the holidays) her Chemistry undergraduate son Henry, and her polydactyl ginger cat, Caramac. Georgie Birkett was born in Kent. She completed her degree in Graphic Design and Illustration at the University of Brighton in 1996. In 2008 she won in the Booktrust Early Years Awards for Is This My Nose? (Red Fox).

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