Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (Harcourt, $16, 978015206057/015206057X, ages 6 months-4 years, October 2008)
Perhaps this title--by two forces of nature in the children's book field--needs no introduction or review. But because the text and pictures celebrate babies around the world and the families who love them, it is worth pausing a moment to take in this perfect book for new parents, new siblings and newborns everywhere. Both Fox and Oxenbury claim to have come out of retirement for this book. The text came to Fox, to hear her tell it, as she was waking from a melatonin-induced slumber on a 40-hour-long journey from Boston to London to Singapore to her native Australia. Oxenbury had hung up her cap more than eight years ago and was enjoying her retirement with husband John Burningham. But this text lured her back to her easel. No wonder.
"There was one little baby who was born far away," the book begins. Oxenbury paints a sherbet-colored landscape of cantaloupe- and honeydew-colored rolling hills, as a child standing next to her seated friend, barely visible, waves to a flock of birds soaring over a small town on the other side of a lemon-colored lake, gently suggesting the humbling size of the world we inhabit. "And another who was born on the very next day," the text continues. Here, Oxenbury zooms in on a sleeping infant being held by a nurse; only the woman's arms are visible--the entire image rests on the tiny child she presents, the center of the unseen parents' universe. Next Fox introduces the book's refrain, "And both of these babies,/ as everyone knows," (a redhead and an Asian toddler look across the book's gutter at each other) "had ten little fingers/ and ten little toes"--and here, against a completely white backdrop, readers see 10 life-size wiggling fingers on the left of the spread, and 10 life-size squirmy toes on the right. Other babies enter the narrative, two by two. Oxenbury shifts between urban and rural backdrops, to close-ups of the children for a visual pacing that superbly augments the text and continues that pattern--established from the outset--of the vast universe with each new child at its center. "There was one little baby who was born on the ice" features a bundled-up Eskimo child in a snowfall with arms lifted to mimic a small penguin companion, while a toddler in a tunic and sandals struts behind a chicken for the line "And another in a tent, who was just as nice." In their joint refrain, the 10 little fingers and toes are on display as the two children ride on swings, one coming toward viewers (on the right of the spread) while the other swings away (on the left). The joy on their faces seems to say, "We're alive! Ain't life grand?," their boundless enthusiasm infectious. The coda spotlights a new mother ("But the next baby born was truly divine, a sweet little child who was mine, all mine"), yet the subtle twist on the refrain at the close keeps this book solidly focused on the child. A must for every nursery.--Jennifer M. Brown