This just in: there's a terrific new title to shelve alongside all the other picture books about the human body and its sometimes squirm-making functions. (Thanks for getting the party started, Everyone Poops.) Nancy Vo's Boobies is as factual as a parent would hope and as funny as a young child would wish.
Vo (The Outlaw) begins with a provocation: "You have just opened a book about boobies" runs below two beige orbs with dark nipple-like centers against white areola-like circles. A turn of the page reveals that the joke's on the reader: the orbs are actually a fish's eyes. The gags persist even after Vo launches into a largely science-minded narrative that covers the breast's function, the number of breasts that various mammals have and breast-related fun facts ("A cow's mammary glands are in a bowl shape, with four booby tubes"). By the time Vo closes with "Say it like you mean it.../ Boobies are great!," readers should have no reason to quibble.
Boobies may be a groundbreaking picture book, but Vo's tidy stencil art has a quaint retro vibe. Vo, employing a simple palette, likes to park adorable animals against white backdrops, leaving space for the book's ideas to settle. The omission of any mention that milk-generating breasts are a feature unique to the biologically female-born mammal may seem like a missed opportunity to be scientifically precise, but Boobies is a big step forward in educating young children about the mammary gland's use beyond the comedic one. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author