My First Day

Fun and very educational.

Jenkins and Page find yet another inviting way to connect young human readers and listeners to creatures who share their world . . . Appealing to a wide age range, this is another crowd pleaser.

Jenkins and Page's simple text effectively highlights the differing degrees of independence of a variety of species' young.

There are many books about animal babies, but Jenkins and Page, whose 2003 collaboration What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? received a Caldecott Honor, stand out by zeroing in on the first day of existence. Their continuum of 22 animals runs from "Even more helpless than a human" (the Siberian tiger whose eyes are shut at birth) to "Get with the program" ("My herd stays on the move," says a newborn blue wildebeest, "and I have to keep up!") and "You're on your own, kid" (the newly hatched leatherback turtle must dodge danger by itself). Jenkins uses an impressive array of textured cut paper to capture the characters in all their furry, prickly, and downy glory. Not surprisingly, many portraits are of mothers with their offspring, but one example of male parenting is sure to stick in readers' minds: Darwin's frog, which creates a kind of nursery in its throat (Jenkins shows the offspring jauntily peeking out from his father's mouth, like nature's idea of a nesting doll). Brief, detailed profiles of each animal close out this handsome examination of child-rearing across the animal kingdom. Ages 4-8. (Jan.)

Copyright 2012 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

PreS-Gr 2--Another winner from this talented creative team. Jenkins's trademark cut-paper collages are up to their usual standard, which is to say they are outstanding, as he captures 23 different newborns on their first day of life. Some of the animals are familiar, such as giraffes and penguins, while others are more exotic, such as a sifaka, a muntjac, and a blue wildebeest. A few simple, clearly written sentences describe the wide variety of things that these youngsters can or cannot do upon entering the world. Children should find the information intriguing as they learn about capybaras that can swim and dive when only a few hours old and how mother zebras memorize the pattern of stripes on their babies so they can recognize them among the thousands of others in the herd. The striking depictions of mother and child set against full-bleed colored backgrounds or clean white space should make for many return readings. Additional information on each animal is included in the back matter. A first purchase for most libraries.--Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

"The style would work as an easy read as well as a readaloud."
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"Jenkins's masterly paper collages achieve their usual high standards of zoological accuracy and beauty. The text is shrewdly written in the first-person voice of each baby animal, mingling personality with scientific fact."
—New York Times Online