Society of Midland Authors - Children’s Fiction Honoree
I Heart You
“Fleming coaxes remarkable emotion out of three-word sentences in a lovely debut.”
Illustration by Sarah Jane Wright from I Heart You
Society of Midland Authors Children’s Fiction Honor Book
I Heart You
This tender, rhyming picture book is a lively celebration of love.
Illustrations by Sarah Jane Wright
Publishers Weekly Starred review
Fleming coaxes remarkable emotion out of three-word sentences in a lovely debut, constructing poetic mini-narratives involving parent-child pairs. Most of those pairs are animals: the first pages show a young rabbit racing back to the family den with a stolen carrot for a tender reunion ("I see you./ I miss you./ I hug you./ I kiss you"). A few pages later, two bears tussle before the older one serves as an ad hoc stepladder so its child can pick an apple from a tree ("I chase you./ I slow you./ I lift you./ I grow you"). Working in pencil and gouache, Wright (A Christmas Goodnight) creates an enchanting rural landscape, concluding with gentle scenes of a mother and daughter watching fireflies fill the air.
“A wonderful choice that will be most appreciated by those looking for a tender family read.”
Kirkus Reviews
Adult animals describe how they show their love for their little ones.
From hugging and kissing to singing and snuggling, these are activities that will be familiar to most children, albeit ones that most animals do not engage in. Adorable animals in pastel-colored pencil-and-gouache pictures act out their love for one another. Though gently anthropomorphized in behavior, these animals are otherwise depicted realistically, unclothed and in nature. “I hide you. / I tease you. // I find you. / I squeeze you,” is depicted with adult-child foxes playing hide-and-seek. Though not all the “verbs” are action words per se, children will have no trouble understanding when the picture shows an adult bear running after a cub, then that same duo hugging in the grass while the text reads “I chase you. / I slow you.” A turn of the page shows the cub on the grown bear’s back reaching for apples in a tree: “I lift you. / I grow you.” Not all are as easy as this, though, as with the two swallows that “sway” and “swing” while flying. The final spreads go from a fawn’s shy meeting with a young child in a blue dress to that child and an adult woman holding and loving each other. Both have brown hair and are white.
The love is palpable in these pages, and adults and children will surely talk about their own ways of loving after sharing this. (Picture book. 3-6)
“All the sweet connection and brave independence navigated by mothers and their little ones somehow contained in perfect little lyrical lines. It’s delightful — I wish I’d had this book when my own girls were small.”
“It’s simply the best kind of picture book because it has deep meaning for both adults and children. It’s an expression
of love that transcends formats like book genre and age brackets. It will be evergreen! ”
“A sweet and heart-felt valentine to share with your little sweethearts.”
School Library Journal
A sweet affirmation of a parent’s love for a child. Starting with rabbits on the edge of a forest near a garden, readers follow several animal parents and their young through the forest. Eventually, the book comes back to the garden, where a mother and child have been working all day. The soft pencil and gouache illustrations show adorable animals playing gently. Each animal gets a quartet of three-word sentences echoing messages of love....since this title would work well for one-on-one lap reading, it may be a nice way to encourage parents and children to come up with their own three-word phrases to describe their feelings.
VERDICT A wonderful choice that will be most appreciated by those looking for a tender family read. -- School library Journal, November 2016
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