cover image Eat, Sleep, Poop

Eat, Sleep, Poop

Alexandra Penfold, illus. by Jane Massey. Knopf, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-385-75503-0

“I haven’t been here very long,” says a peach-skinned, towheaded infant. “But I already have a rigorous schedule”—one neatly summed up in this book’s title (which it shares with a 2010 parenting book by Scott W. Cohen). Penfold, a literary agent making her children’s book debut, gives her young narrator the offhand but pointed tone of a busy adult professional. “It’s a lot to fit in a single day, but I manage,” the infant notes in a perfectly world-weary humblebrag, adding that on particularly busy days, “I have to cut back... on the sleep.” One suspects that adults are the real target market (expect to see this book turn up at a lot of baby showers), but even if actual children miss the wry subtlety of the text, Massey (Lucy and Henry Are Twins) has them covered: her genial cartooning finds ample visual variation in the title’s three verbs (or are they imperatives?) while charting developmental leaps. Besides, the sight of someone sniffing a baby’s bottom and/or quickly handing off said bottom to someone else is a joke with universal appeal. Ages 2–5. [em]Author’s agent: Susan Ginsburg, Writers House. (Sept.) [/em]