Reviews: (by author)

Gutman, Anne and Georg Hallensleben. Lisa's Baby Sister. New York: Knopf, 2003. $9.95. ISBN 0-375-82251-8.

"My mother has been pregnant for a very long time, and I am tired of it," says the outspoken rabbit-child Lisa. She is unpersuaded by the fact that her older sister, who swore she'd never talk to Lisa, now talks to her so much she can't watch her cartoons uninterrupted. What does persuade her to at least look at her new sibling is someone's remark that she and her new sister have the same nose While looking, Lisa falls in love, so much so that she wants to take Lila for Show and Tell. Pure love? Yes, but with an ulterior motive-if Lisa takes Lila to school, then Mom can finish Lisa's Halloween costume..and everyone's happy.

This is the best and funniest get-ready-for-your-new-sibling book since Russell Hoban's A Baby Sister for Frances. Frances is wry and occasionally sulky (she runs away to a spot beneath the kitchen table), while Lisa is much more overt about her distaste and her eventual turnaround. Like the many other Lisa and Gaspard books, this is superbly illustrated with a European ambience (it is a foreign book in translation from French) and a good deal of humor.

A.A. Spring 2003

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