cover image The Daddy Book

The Daddy Book

Ann Morris. Silver Press, $5.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-382-24697-5

Billed as the World's Family series, this perky but standard-issue quartet of photo-essays explores relations between parents and offspring all over the globe. Mothers ``wash you and feed you and teach you to cook.'' Fathers ``play songs for you. They take you fishing.'' Alongside this sex-role stereotyping, however, is a generally successful bid for a multicultural overview. Ken Heyman, supplying vivid photos for Baby, Mommy and Daddy, shows families of different races and ethnicities, as an illustrated glossary at the back of each book points out (``This child from Peru... is wrapped in a llama's wool blanket''; ``This Pueblo mother and her little boy make delicious pies for a family party''). In Animals, photos of animals with their young, taken by a variety of photographers, are only serviceable--the compositions aren't especially original and the colors are washed out. Here Morris has varied the format, replacing the straightforward sentences of the other books with pedestrian rhymes (``Kangaroos are very jumpy./ Camels frequently are bumpy''). Each of these titles achieves its modest goal, but leaves no lasting impression. Ages 2-6. (Dec.)