Where Do Babies Come From

My nieces wanted to know how auntie had a baby in her belly. This was a perfect book for them. We absolutely loved reading this to them.

I love using books to help reinforce teaching with my children. I definitely recommend this one. My kids love lift-a-flap books!

This book was a missed opportunity. I own many Usbourne books, but this one is not a favorite. There is some educational value in here, but you lose a lot of its impact because the material was not well presented, visualized, or laid out. Plus, the book included one of my pet-peeves in science teaching.What I expected and wanted - With the opening of flaps, I figured the book at its simplest would on every page have a flap that revealed a baby inside its mommy or egg and then reveal that baby after it was born/hatched. If the book had just done that I would have been thrilled. At my extremest expectations, I desired each 2-page layout to focus on only ONE particular animal and walk through the process from fertilization through birth plus some growth/development (so we could see tadpoles turn into frogs and caterpillars turn into butterflies.) It would have enough detail for preschool through elementary school students to learn something new and follow along in the cycle.However, this book is NOT either of those things that I had hoped. This book is merely a bunch of random facts that are not necessarily connected to anything else on the page. You never really get the sense of a life cycle. You never see what is inside any eggs... you just see creatures after they hatch from eggs. In fact, you only see babies inside a human and a cat (far less than I expected since I thought this WAS the main focus of the entire book).In general, the topics of each 2-page spread is set only by the title at the top. These titles are: Where do babies come from? How are babies made? When are babies born? What do babies need? How do babies grow up? What will I be?. Of these, only the last page on what they grow up into actually answered the title question across all the flaps. The rest of the pages were full of hits and misses.Here is an example: How are babies made includes: birds dancing together as a test before starting a family and birds showing off to attract a mate... whereas the rest of the page was about fertilizing eggs (asexual and sexual reproduction). AND this page came after the page where mommies were already pregnant with babies... which does not flow well logically. So, even if you accept their book organization, they at least should reorder the pages. I feel the first page in the book should have been choosing a mate/partner, second page should have been on fertilization, and third page about seeing babies growing inside... then moving on to birth, baby needs, growth stages, and becoming adults. To go out of that order was really odd.Here is another example: When are babies born page includes: a polar bear in a den with her cubs and eggs hatching without any discussion of timing. In the end, only 4 of the 7 flaps dealt with WHEN babies are born (9 months, 22 months, 6-8 weeks, most in spring.)Now, the flap about how more babies are born in spring is a big issue for me. The flap claims more babies are born in spring because there is more food to eat. Hunh? like sheep look around and say wow there is lots of food.. so lets have a baby! I teach science for a living and have raised a lot of animals. This is a ridiculous answer that a lot of people promote. Truth is when an animal BREEDS determines when a baby is born... so go look at why they bred when they did! Chances are its when the animals are most well fed and healthy (mid-summer through start of fall) which causes the females to be in heat and thus winter pregnancies and spring babies. Also, keep in mind that changes in daylight affects female fertility so when the days shorten, eggs are not released, which thus affects when babies can be born. Many animals in the northern areas actually will bread year-round nearer the equator where sunlight remains relatively constant For some species (those that have extremely short gestation periods) you could argue plentiful food in spring helps enable females to be fertile and thus reproduce at that time, but its not as if those animals made a conscious choice. Stop making animals humans - they are not looking at a calendar and figuring out when is the most convenient time to have their babies nor are they sitting around thinking about how to mutate their own DNA to adapt to their environments! Scientists really need to be more cautious in how we present knowledge or we give people false ideas.In the end, this book was not what I had hoped for and for what it is, it was not well done. I mean even the artwork was a tad lame - the elephant was a blob with rectangular ears and looked more like a giant pig with a proboscis.

Used this as an introductory book for kids. They loved the pictures and flaps and it sparked a few good questions.

My son loves this book. So many flaps make it super interactive. He has his favorite parts and recommend it for kiddos.

Book is great, but pages were a little warped. Maybe from the heat of traveling?

Love this book! Great for my small children to learn a little more about babies of all types.

I think it is worth pointing out that this book features a gay couple so that families can decide whether or not this book is a good fit for them.

Great informative book, like all these in the series. It does say that storks do not bring babies and that is a myth. Also talks about eggs and sperm. Brought for my toddler as we are expecting 2nd child but worried he will go into nursery talking about sperm, so I make up new captions for those parts hehe!

Bought this for my almost 3 years old as she is fascinated by pregnancy and family life, and she really loves it. It is really captivating as it has interesting facts about both humans and animals and she loves lifting the flaps. I believe it will be even more useful later, when she will start asking these questions and will understand more. I must admit I learned a few things from it too.

The first book on this topic we have introduced to our 3 & 5 yo. They were fascinated. Where babies come from shouldn’t be awkward or a big deal.

We are trying to answer questions for our 6 year old and while this does not explain all of them it’s a good starting place for discussionLift the flaps is not a perfect format however as she is a bit to old for that

Lovely book explaining how babies (humans and other animals and creatures) are made in an age appropriate way. I bought this for my four-year old son and it kept him engaged, so I think it's pitched perfectly for his age.