Author(s): Sharon Holt

NZ Picture Books

Holly has to stay at home with Dad while her Mum goes to another meeting, so he decides to tell Holly a bedtime story about the night she was born. Looking at the pictures of baby animals and their mothers on her wall, she asks if she hatched out of an egg like a chicken. Dad tells her if she were a new chick, her mum would have fluffed up her feathers and sat on her to keep her warm. Your mother didn't do that. Holly then asks, what if she was a kitten? He tells her she would have licked her all over but her mother didn't do that. Well, what if she was a kangaroo? She would have kept her in her pocket - her mother wouldn't do that! The text continues in this way with plenty of warmth and humour until it concludes with Dad describing the night that Holly was born and what her mother really did: she "held her close to her heart and cried and cried."