Bad Baby: 249 Cranky Babies and Other Not So Precious Bundles of Joy [Paperback]

You won't see anybody saying "Koochie koochie koo" to these babies. Just as "Bad Cat" and "Bad Dog" ripped the lid off the world of "cute" housepets, "Bad Baby" strips away all the illusions of innocence that have been swaddling babies for centuries, revealing them in all their petulant, pretentious, and potty-mouthed glory. Babes in arms? How 'bout babes up in arms. Baby talk? Forget it. These cherubs graduated from "Goo goo" school a long time ago. Now they're bundles of bitchy commentary, barbed conversation, and appallingly adult thoughts. Rachael speaks for babies everywhere when she's says, "Please, I beg of you-stop singing 'The Wheels On The Bus.", Same goes for Justine, who announces, "The only reason I make these cute faces is so that you'll support me till I'm 37." Then there's the officious-looking Justine, in sunglasses with a mobile pressed to her ear: "To be honest, Jake," she's saying, "nobody wants to work with a leading man who's not toilet-trained." Every glimpse of baby's fate is enough to make veteran parents, new parents, and parents-to-be scream-but mostly with laughter! Full of impossibly adorable faces, unexpected utterances, and a completely refreshing indecency, "Bad Baby" goes where no book has gone before: Into the dark hearts and polluted minds of our most precious commodity.

Not bad bad, but cute bad. Really cute. Bad Baby is a screamingly funny collection of 247 priceless baby photos matched with candid captions. Theres Gabriella at the wheel of the family SUV: Dont try to stop meIve put up with you for eleven months. Chelsea, wearing only a diaper, who says: You know that slogan, Just do it? I just did. Danny, chilling on his baby lounger: Im in the wetness protection program. The tough, cell phone-toting Olivia: To be honest, Jake, nobody wants to work with a leading man whos not toilet trained. Kieran, sighing in his crib: Merciful God, if she winds up that musical mobile once more, my heads going to implode. And the squinting Isabel, illustrating Bad Baby Early Warning Sign #333: Baby bores visitors with endless Don Corleone impersonations. Full of utterly adorable faces matched with the full range of baby badnessunrepentent antinappers, street-corner Similac dealers, rebels in a puppy suitBad Baby gives voice to the secret inner world of babies, where theres clearly a lot more going on than wondering where their next binkys coming from.

Unmasked! It's time to stop cooing and face the facts: there's another side to the most adorable, innocent, perfect creatures in the world. Babies are sassy. They're brazen. They're sarcastic way beyond their years. And they don't give a blankety-blankie who knows it. So next time baby drools all over your best suit, ask yourselfis this really just about teething?

R.D. Rosen is an Edgar Awardwinning mystery novelist and a humorist whose work has appeared on PBS, HBO, CBS, andwith Harry Prichetton National Public Radio.

Harry Prichett is a former member of Chicago City Limits and the creator of the off-off-Broadway one-man show, Work=Pain=Success.

Rob Battles is Senior Vice President of Creative Services for Rainbow, a cable network company.

Being a babys not easy. Conditions are less than ideal. You have negligible motor and language skills. You cant always get your hands on food when you want it. House pets are bigger than you, often by a multiple of five or six. Then, of course, you have parents, and not of your own choosing. They dont understand how rich and complicated your emotional life is. Indeed, they spew only nonsense syllables. Remember what it was like? Dont lie. If you remembered, youd have been hard pressed to make babies of your own. Thanks to the blissful collective amnesia that renders early childhood a blur of relatives faces and bathroom emergencies, most babies sail blithely off toward adulthood, a stage of life when they themselves will start cooing and ooohing and aaahing over babies. Why? Because they have completely repressed what its like to be one. Well, look what the stork just brought: Two-hundred-and-forty-some-odd tots to remind you that babies have a lot more on their minds than where their next baba is coming from. Each photo in this book features a refreshingly churlish cherub. A little devil in diapers. A precious bundle of candor, ingratitude, andokay, sheer joy. So, turn the page and watch out for drool. And none of that kitchy-kitchy-koo stuff. --R.D. Rosen, Harry Pritchett, Rob Battles