cover image Baby’s First Bank Heist

Baby’s First Bank Heist

Jim Whalley, illus. by Stephen Collins. Bloomsbury, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-5476-0062-5

Baby Frank, who still sleeps in a crib and wears black-and-white-striped onesies, desperately wants a pet. “It didn’t matter what it was—/ a dog, a cat, or rabbit—/ if Frank saw fur while out on walks,/ he’d lunge and try to grab it,” Whalley writes. But a pet and its accoutrements require something babies don’t have: cash. The titular heist goes off without a hitch (Frank slips through the bars and past the laser beam alarms), and thanks to the internet, he soon accumulates a secret menagerie—until Mom discovers the rhino in the shed. What’s a family to do with a zoo’s worth of animals, and how can they ensure that baby’s first heist is his last? The story’s wrap-up hedges its bets ethically—yes, the punishment fits the crime, but Frank’s realization that “stealing things was very wrong” feels more mandated than convincing. Nevertheless, Collins, a cartoonist and graphic novelist making his children’s book debut, creates a colorful, slyly skewed world for his obsessed protagonist to inhabit, and Frank’s youthful resourcefulness and deeply appealing, googly eyed “who, me?” look are enough to suggest that he isn’t truly a bad seed. Ages 3–6. [em](Mar.) [/em]