The best way to read Carol Lynn Pearson's new book is aloud, so you will more surely notice her sly rhymes and the rhythm of her style. When you read silently, as my granddaughter once said, explaining the speed which is so much faster than reading aloud: "There's this thing you do with your eyes!" However, that same speed can enable Carol Lynn's nuanced phrases and tricky, sometimes Ogden Nash-like rhymes to elude you. For instance, in her poem Diapering at 4:00 a.m., notice the placement of stratagem and 4:00 a.m.

He created the heavens and the earth
And the seas, and the naked, needing
Infants crying to be held.
He thought it all up
This clever stratagem.

And yet-
I'll bet he smiled
When he thought about diapering at 4:00 A.M.

Carol Lynn is quirky, and takes us unaware with a sudden knowledge that she has slipped in another rhyme. But where is it? What word, or group of words, in this case, did she use to get past our guard? Her rhymes are never where you expect them to be.

I liked Mother to Child, especially the first phrase.

Look --
Your little fist fits mine
Like the pit in a plum.

. . . 

I'm your mother, true,
But in the end
Merely an older equal
Doing her faltering best
For a dear, small friend.

In The Ninth Month, she speaks to her unborn baby.

Being a duplex
I have been happy, my dear,
To loan you half the house
Rent-free and furnished
As best I could.

You have been a good
Tenant, all in all
Quiet, yet comfortably there
Tapping friendly on the wall.

. . . 

But we will keep in touch.
There are bonds, my dear,
That reach beyond a block
Or a mile or a hemisphere
Born of much love and labor.

I approve the move
And gladly turn from landlady
To neighbor.

The illustration is delightful, showing the mother's torso as a house with a small locked cottage attached, and mother just unlocking the door.

The illustrations deserve attention, as there is one to illustrate almost every poem, and they are an integral part of the book. First you notice the ovals. Although I tired of the salmon-and-pink color scheme; the illustrations by Traci O'Very Covey were sometimes very clever, sometimes mundane, but always egg-inspired. Even the straight lines were curvy. Motherhood was the theme -- the ovum the scheme. Mother, baby, downtown skyline, megaphone-all straight lines curved. Pearson and Covey have collaborated before, in Fuzzy Red Bathrobe.

Day-Old Child has probably been read aloud more than any other of Carol Lynn's poems since the year her first book of poetry came out. It's a favorite in Relief Society, Mother's Day Programs, and the home. It's the lead poem in this book; it's also the title. As you reread it, then continue with the collection, you can see the change from the conventional every-other-line rhyming system to her present, seemingly haphazard placement of offbeat rhymes. I don't think this poet is ever haphazard. The poems that would seem to be so "easy to write" have a singular warm charm and denouements that catch the reader off guard.

This is a very small gift book, so the price seems heavy: $9.95 plus 7% tax = $10.25, divided by 8 ounces (which includes the dust cover) comes to $1.25 per ounce. The new mother or the old mother who receives this book will probably cherish every ounce, if she's a Pearson fan. Count me in that group. Somewhere, in almost every poem, she manages to surprise me.

Target audience: Mothers of any age, Pearson fans; gift buyers for mothers.