I Kissed the Baby!
Mary Murphy’s books are well-known for their round, friendly illustrations and timeless stories. Whether simple for very young ones or more intricate for older readers, we can always expect a twist, some humor, and some sweetness in her books.
In her picture book I Kissed the Baby! Murphy depicts the excitement of a new baby in the house. In the book, all of the animals in the neighborhood exclaim over the new baby and how each and every one of them has interacted with it somehow or another. The fish leaps out of the water to ask the stork if he’s seen the baby; the stork replies, “Yes! I saw the baby, the teeny weeny thing.”
The chicken, lizard, butterfly, frog, aunt, bird, and mouse all prattle on about the new baby, just as relatives of a brand new baby human might do. On and on the sweet black-and-white story continues, with various animal friends feeding the baby, singing to it, tickling it, and of course, kissing it. When the mouse asks the duck if she’s kissed the baby like he has, she replies, “Of course I kissed the baby, my own amazing baby.” And on the next page she proceeds to do just that again, to a little yellow duckling smiling up at her.
Bright colors—pink and yellow—then decorate the last few pages as the baby duck quacks with joy, surrounded by hearts that represent the love from his mommy. We finally get to know for sure that the baby in question throughout the story was a duckling, and we already know that he is loved very much by the whole community. As the old adage says, it takes a village to raise a child—and, in this case, a barnyard to raise a duckling.
Children will giggle as the animals take turns fawning over the newborn, and parents can point out that the same thing happened when the children were newborns. It’s also a great way to talk about a new baby in the house with an older child, explaining about how excited people get around a new baby and about how it’s perfectly natural; every new baby deserves attention and love, but that doesn’t mean that the older child won’t receive attention and love, too. He or she can get excited and feed, sing to, tickle, and kiss the baby as well—and as the big brother or sister, he or she will get to do so the most!
