I Used to Be the Baby by Robin Ballard

I Used to Be the Baby by Robin Ballard

Rating: 4.5 stars

Last week I checked out ten sibling/new baby books from the library.  They were horrible.  They were so bad that I hid them from Lorelei and Ben so that they wouldn't want me to read them out loud to them.  If they had found them, I would have changed the words around.  While I generally don't want to spend too much time talking about not-so good books because there are so many good books out there, I do plan on reviewing all the sibling/new baby books that I checked out so that those of you looking for some know what each teaches.

This book was the best of the bunch.  By miles!  It was the only one that didn't assume that the older sibling/s in the family either dreaded a new baby's arrival or despised the new baby.  Instead, it shows a older brother learning how his younger brother is different from him, and gently teaching him new things and/or the right way to do things.

I'm not so sure if big sisters would appreciate this book as much as big brothers--Lorelei is in a phase of wanting (for the most part) "girl books," which she defines as books with girls on the cover or mostly about girls.  Luckily there are lots of exceptions, and since about half of the books we read are about animals, they don't count, even if it's a boy animal.  But when reading a sibling/new baby book, I am guessing that you've got to be pretty gender-specific.  Would be happy to be wrong, because that would mean a whole lot more books to go around!