Love You Head to Toe

Barron compares the ways that human and animal babies interact with others, play, snack, and cuddle. A gray kitten gently bats at a yellow butterfly just as an infant touches the butterfly on a mobile: “Baby, you’re just like a kitten,/ Reaching up so high.” As two bears hug, a woman offers a reassuring embrace as her child slips in the autumn leaves: “Baby, you’re a bear cub,/ Toddling on two feet.” A baby in a bathtub clutches a plastic toy while an otter baby holds a purple sea urchin on its chest. Barron’s friendly collage illustrations have a shapely, multidimensional look that readers will want to reach out and touch, and they show appreciable similarities between babies of all sorts. Ages up to 3. (Mar.)