This warm and lovely book from author Muon Thi Van and illustrator Jessica Love (Julián is a Mermaid) celebrates love and the many ways we express it. Each spread uses a call-and-response dialog as it depicts various people showing their love. One page, for example, shows two moms holding their baby, with the text, “I love you because you carry me.” The opposite page shows the moms holding the child’s hands, with the text, “Because I love you I am strong.” Another page shows two dads and their daughter, who has just drawn on the walls. “I love you because you let me make mistakes,” it reads. The facing page shows all three of them transforming the daughter’s drawing into a mural, with the text, “Because I love you, no mistake is ever too great.”
Other pages depict other parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, siblings, and friends, helping each other be strong, present, playful, patient, and more. One shows identical twins with dresses and shoulder-length hair blowing out a birthday cake, with the text, “I love you because we go together.” The next page shows the same pair, several years later. One now has short cropped hair and wears a t-shirt and jeans, seemingly intended to be a transgender boy. The text reads, “Because I love you, we change and grow together.”
Jessica Love’s illustrations are as captivating as ever, and her engaging, expressive people have a range of racial and ethnic identities, ages, and physical abilities. While not every person or family seems coded as queer (some parents are shown singly, so it’s hard to tell), there are also no different-sex couples in the book.
This is love as conversation and connection; love in action and as interaction. The publisher says it is intended “to be read aloud by one or two people.” Find someone you love and read it together today.
