Baby's Got the Blues - Hardcover

Carol Diggory Shields is the author of The Bugliest Bug (9780744598131) and Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp (9781406312683), which she was inspired to write after "being called a Nagosaurus by my five-year-old". Currently a children's librarian, Carol has also worked with children as a recreational therapist and at one time was a designer of stuffed toys. Her years of being around children have definitely helped her get a feel for the stories that kids love, told in animated verse with an infectious beat. The author of several books for children, Carol lives in northern California. Lauren Tobia graduated from the University of the West of England with a degree in Illustration and was highly commended in the Macmillan Children's Book Prize. The early success of the Anna Hibiscus novels by Atinuke, which Lauren illustrated, led to her illustrating the Anna Hibiscus picture books (Anna Hibiscus' Song and Splash! Anna Hibiscus). Lauren lives in Bristol with her family.

With its swinging, catchy and chantable text and delicious scenes that capture small domestic details to perfection, (big sister and baby wearing matching bibs for instance,) this is likely to become a firm favourite wherever there is a bouncing babe. Lauren Tobia seems set to follow in Helen Oxenbury's footsteps. In a word, gorgeous. * Red Reading Hub * Very realistically written in a poem that every parents will understand and one that your baby/toddler will love to hear recited over and over. A really fun interpretation of being a baby * Babybuzz * could quickly become an all-ages anthem for anyone connected to a newborn * Publishers Weekly * The story is written as a blues riff and could well be sung to a made up tune . . . the pictures are fun too, with lots of humour mixed up in the bright colours and detail * Books for Keeps * A diverting attempt to imagine what it is to be a baby: it explains that it is hard to be a wordless infant who cannot get through to his parents about his wet nappy, raging hunger and inability to walk. Tobia manages to convey the baby's desperation in a few strokes of the pen, a down-turned mouth on a potato-shaped head, mournful eyebrows, a pair of grabby hands. And even if love is wheeled out not altogether convincingly as the cure for everything (not sure that it helps with nappy rash), the story earns its feelgood finale and will boost toddlers with tiresome baby siblings as it invites them to swank about their own superior skills. -- Kate Kellaway * Observer * Diverting * Sunday Business Post (Dublin) * Cute and comical . . . tongue in cheek and very entertaining * Carousel *