This is a family story, on several levels. John Burningham met Helen Oxenbury in art school, and they have been married for 46 years. With There's Going to Be a Baby, they give birth to their first joint creative endeavour, and it is well worth the long gestation period. (For the record, they also have three children.) To hear the husband-and-wife team tell it, they first dabbled with the idea of collaborating 10 years ago, but it wasn't quite working. Leave it to David Lloyd, who's been Oxenbury's editor since he first arrived at Walker Books (the U.K. parent to Candlewick Press, more familial ties), to ask the couple to bring out that idling manuscript and have another go at it.
In the first spread, a full-color, full-bleed image focuses on an intimate exchange between a boy of preschool age and his mother. The woman's back is to us, but her profile shows a parent fully intent on her son: "There's going to be a baby." The boy's expression seems neutral, but the cat looks alarmed. On the next spread, snow falls and the boy balances on a foot-high wall. "When is the baby going to come?" he asks, his words printed in navy blue. His mother's response, in light blue type, lets him know what to expect: "The baby will arrive when it's ready, in the fall, when the leaves are turning brown...." As the boy thinks about names for the baby, he imagines it will be a boy whom he can call "Peter or Spider-Man," and a thought balloon pictures an infant in yellow superhero attire, dangling from a spiderweb.
Burningham, whose Would You Rather... (published more than three decades ago) proved he knows how to set up a humorous contrast, creates a series of comical scenarios based on shared activities between mother and child. Rendered in Oxenbury's saturated, luxurious colors, the real-life events spur the mother's suggestions of what the baby might be when he or she grows up. (For the record, Oxenbury says Burningham did not have input into the illustrations: "I couldn't very well have him looking over my shoulder, now, could I?") Each time, the boy sees the situation literally, with the baby engaged in grown-up occupations as a comics-style sequence. So, while a meal in a neighborhood restaurant inspires the mother to imagine the baby as a chef one day, the boy pictures disaster: "I don't think I'd eat anything that was made by the baby." Pixilated panels chronicle the infant sporting apron and chef's hat while spilling eggs and flipping pancakes willy-nilly.
Meanwhile, time marches on; the mother's profile grows, and flowers bloom. The boy senses that the baby's arrival is drawing nearer. When a trip to see the monkeys triggers the mother's thoughts of the baby working at the zoo, the boy says, a bit too happily, "Then the baby might get eaten by a tiger" (no worries--the boy's fantasy shows only the infant's exhaustion from cleaning zebras and feeding the seals in a series of windowpane vignettes). Mother's idea of the baby as a banker brings the boy back around ("Well, that would be very good," he thinks as he piles the coins high). Just when things seemed to be going so well, the boy pronounces, standing in his bath, "Mrs. Anderson's baby threw up all over their new carpet." Surely Mommy won't bring a baby home now!
The boy looks older; he stands taller next to his mother as the leaves begin to fall. Burningham and Oxenbury circle back to an intimate portrait of mother and child. Under the covers next to her, the boy displays a calm resolve: "When is the baby coming, Mommy? I want to see the baby." And then, in a brilliant shift, the next scene depicts the boy on the bus with his Grandad, going to see the baby. He reviews all of the possibilities he had explored with his mommy ("Maybe it will be Susan or Peter. Maybe it will be good at cooking...."). Author and artist keep the focus completely on the boy hero: "Grandad, the baby will be our baby. We're going to love the baby, aren't we?" Now, alongside Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes for all new mothers, we have There's Going to Be a Baby, covering the gamut of emotions for a soon-to-be older sibling. This is an essential story for the entire family.--Jennifer M. Brown