A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!” his lamb baas back. Instead, cartoony art and spare text alike are most concerned with communicating longing and love.Ī succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.Ī grumpy bull says, “DADA!” his calf moos back. When a baby does arrive, suddenly parting the seas like a tiny pachyderm Moses in a sailboat, the parents are thrilled that their baby is “HERE.” The metaphorical use of boats and journeying to find a baby could lend itself to interpretations of the story as an adoption narrative, but this isn’t clearly indicated. In a poignant twist, the journey doesn’t immediately fulfill their baby wish, and they return home saddened but resilient. Pictures eschew crib-assembly or other traditional baby-planning preparations to show the couple building a boat and setting sail, as if for some island cabbage patch where they might find an elephant’s child. As they begin to notice others with babies (birds in a nest, another elephant pushing a stroller), they start to wish, plan, learn and build. Perhaps in an attempt to tilt the story toward child-friendliness, the adults in question are an anthropomorphic elephant couple. The text is delivered in direct address to an unnamed “you” who’s at first absent from the would-be parents’ lives. Neither a where-do-babies-come-from book nor one about sibling adjustment to a new baby, this fanciful treatment of parental longing for a baby seems aimed at adults more than children. A much-wanted child arrives as fulfillment of his parents’ dearest wish.
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