The squirming new bundle that Ninja Baby’s parents have the nerve to bring into the home formerly under one-Ninja occupation is a newborn boy, and a Kung Fu Master at that. It’s amazing how martial the briefest contact with Ninja Baby can be: eating a doughnut rather than Mom’s carefully prepared food qualifies as a “sneak attack,” and diapering time as “hand-to-hand combat” (Dad is the loser in that fight.) Ninja Baby could be the next James Bond, with such stealthy skills as under-water invisibility at bathtime and rustling up undetectable camouflage in order to watch PG-13 television behind her parents’ backs.Įvery only child has it made-until there is no such thing as only anymore. The boringly traditional rituals of babyhood and toddlerdom haven’t a chance against ex-Nina. For this girl, no infant with an ounce of self-respect and warrior cred could help but insert an all-important extra letter into such a wimpy appellation. It’s not like her parents were forced at sword point to give her the name Nina at birth. It goes without saying, naturally, that Ninja Baby’s behavior (antic, roguish) is NOT HER FAULT. Ninja Baby delivers a game of hide-and-go-seek-every-humorous-detail-possible while doling out rather tasty lessons concerning that playground-where boo-boos are also known to happen-called life. Seuss hopping into Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak’s classic A Hole is to Dig.

This is a laugh-out-loud entertainment for grownups as much as it is a playful seminar in self-discovery, self-recognition, and bonding without bondage-a giggly shock, shock at valiantly immature behavior-for kids.

Don’t let the ankle-biting decoy of the title fool you. Rumors, and also some tangible signs of a Ninja Turtles comeback (how was your Halloween?) notwithstanding, it seems inconceivable that any spoofs or alternate tongue-in-cheek parodies of this class of covert agents that once terrorized feudal Japan could hold a katana sword to David Zeltser and Diane Goode’s Ninja Baby.

The beast of cretacea by todd strasser