Nancy Shaw, Sheep in a Jeep (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1986)

Simply put: the kid's favorite book four months running. Inventive use of rhythm, excellent word choice, hilarious, expressive illustrations. (Our edition is also a massively oversized board book, which is too heavy for baby to hold, but that doesn't stop him trying, and it's really doing wonders for his coordination; he loves turning the pages on his own.) Let me put it this way: the entire family is so enthralled by it that come next trip to the bookstore, we're planning on picking up the rest of the series entire. Worth checking out even if your days of raising the preliterate set are long behind you. **** ½