MUSTACHE BABY
By Bridget Heos.
Illustrated by Joy Ang.
40 pp. Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin ­Harcourt. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)

You never know what you’ll get in the delivery room, and something isn’t quite right with this new baby. Mustachioed! “You’ll have to wait and see whether it is a good-guy mustache or a bad-guy mustache,” the nurse coolly informs his baffled family. Heos’s offbeat tale muses on the possibilities, playing off parental hopes and panicky nightmares. He could be a cowboy who cares for injured animals and mends broken fences. He could be a Spanish painter or a sword fighter. It’s hard to know what kind of person a child will grow up to be, especially as his mustache lengthens and curls unexpectedly. What if he becomes a cat burglar or a cereal criminal? Stay tuned.