cover image You’re Here!

You’re Here!

Karla Oceanak, illus. by Julie Rowan-Zoch. Bailiwick (Legato, dist.), $7.95 (16p) ISBN 978-1-934649-45-9

This exuberant ode to a baby’s accomplishments during its first year kicks off the Year-by-Year Books series (You’re One! and You’re Two! are available simultaneously). “So much, much will happen/ in 12 months to come!/ You’ll wriggle and smile/ and suck your wee thumb,” writes Oceanak beside newcomer Rowan-Zoch’s delicately colored sketch of a baby elephant. Eating, speaking first words, and crawling are other highlighted milestones, and while the rhymes occasionally skirt the edge of being too precious, Oceanak balances those moments with an acknowledgment of parental weariness amid all that first-year joy: “And we knock, knock on wood/ that you’ll sleep through the night.” Up to age 1. (Oct.)