A little girl resents the arrival of a baby brother from day one. "They put the baby in my room. Even though he's very small, he has a lot of stuff," she complains. "A picture of three kittens and a fuzzy pink walrus hangs where my 'Types of Deadly Spiders' poster used to be." She keeps trying to convince her parents that they need a better baby, one who can play Frisbee and whistle, but the baby seems to be a permanent fixture. It's only when the girl's worshipful little brother dissolves in tears at her outburst--"BABIES RUIN EVERYTHING!"--that big sister figures out that maybe he just needs a better sister. As the two siblings become thick as thieves, and just as mischievous, the parents soon realize they're "no match" for their offspring.
Husband-wife team Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr run Bobbledy Books (a book and music club for kids), a small press called Idiots' Books and a letterpress design shop, and have co-created more than 60 books for children and adults, including Ten Thousand Stories.
Swanson's hilarious stream-of-consciousness narrative pairs perfectly with Behr's cute, big-headed children and merely silhouetted adults in this ideal gift book for every big-sibling-to-be. Young readers will love looking for the heroine's chubby, emotive hamster, Leonard, on every spread. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor