WISH KIDS CAME WITH INSTRUCTIONS? At least you can take heart―and have a laugh―in the knowledge that the little dears confound and amuse all of Nothing captures our rollicking relationship with them―and theirs with the adult world world―quite like New Yorer cartoons.

The magazine brilliant cartoonists (a good number of whom are rumored to have never com-pletely left childhood behind) lead us from the hos -pital nursery, through toddlerhood, into the school years and beyond―to that long-lasting challenge of being and adult with parents.

Selected by Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, this collection brings together126 great cartoons (from artists including George Booth, Roz Chast, Leo Cullum, William Hamilton, Gahan Wilson, Jack Ziegler, and many more). The intro-duction from the one-and-only Roz Chast fives us a riot of insight and delight-which, come to think of it, is not a bad description of childhood.

Robert Mankoff is the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, president of The Cartoon Bank , a Wonderful cartoonist in his own right, and, oh yeah, a dad and a son. He has prblished numerous collections of his own work and is the editor of a half-dozen books of New Yorker cartoons.

Roz Chast is a national treaure. She has been described by David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, as “the magazine's only certifiable genius,” and her work is eagerly anticipated by many of us. She has published a number of books and has also illustrated the books of others, She is the mother of two children―an experience that Just maybe influ-ences her work