cover image Mommy Laid an Egg: Or, Where Do Babies Come From?

Mommy Laid an Egg: Or, Where Do Babies Come From?

Babette Cole, Chronicle Books. Chronicle Books, $13.95 (40pp) ISBN 978-0-8118-0350-2

Cole ( Supermoo ) unleashes her endearingly loony sense of humor on the subject of the birds and the bees, and the result is, as expected, hilarious. When a thoroughly befuddled set of '90s parents (he wears his gray hair in a ponytail, she wears Birkenstocks) decides to inform their offspring how babies are made, their explanations (babies are grown from seeds, made out of gingerbread, squeezed from tubes like toothpaste, brought by dinosaurs) are greeted with an explosion of giggles. Their children quickly grab paper and pen and proceed to set the record straight. Cole's drawings and simple text are candid without being offensive and, without getting terribly complicated or serious, communicate the essentials of conception and childbirth in a direct but light-hearted manner that will leave everyone grinning and no one embarrassed. As always, Cole's idiosyncratic, cartoon-style illustrations are a treat--and her renditions of greenhouse babies and baby-paste tubes are outrageously funny. All ages. (June)