Crystal - Children's Literature Critic

In the last few weeks I have started reading to Joseph each day. We had given reading a number of tries before, but he could never really sit in my lap long enough to make it worthwhile. If I catch him right before or after a nap, we are now at a point where he will sit quietly for a few minutes and listen to my voice and look at the pictures. If its a particularly long book, by the end, he's kicking his legs and putting the book in his mouth, but we can get through a reasonable amount of any children's story now. I am now becoming quite familiar with children's books and find myself critiquing them in my head while reading to Joseph. So I have decided that every once and awhile, I'll give you my thoughts on a specific book. I'll warn you that I tend to find very random things about each book to critique.

Tonight, I would like to discuss "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch. The cliff notes version of this book is that a mother rocks her new baby to sleep and sings him a song, "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be". The book takes you through the various stages of the mother raising her son (a 2 year old, a 9 year old, teenager, grown man, etc) and ends with the grown man rocking the old woman and singing her the same song.

In general, I like the concept of this book and I like to imagine Joseph always being my sweet and innocent little boy although I know someday he will grow up, do stupid things and eventually move away. However, there are two things that really bother me about this book.

#1 - At the point where the baby has grown up to be an adult and is living away from his mother, she gets in the car and drives to her son's home (ladder in tow), crawls through his bedroom window (using the ladder), climbs into bed with him, rocks him and sings him the song. Ok, maybe I am crazy...but this is CREEPY! I hope I am always close to Joseph, but if I am driving over to his house and rocking him at night when he is 30, someone please stop me! This woman has major co-dependency issues and should really seek some therapy.

#2 - Something is wrong with the age progression of the mother in this story. At the beginning, she looks the a normal 20-something new mom. By the time the kid is in high school, she's looking more like a grandmother than just 15 years older than when the kid was born. And by the time the baby is an adult (I am guessing he is 30-ish based on the illustration), she's so old and feeble, the son is carrying her. I mean, unless this women has one of those rapid age progression diseases, the illustrations are just off. I know this is nit picky, but these are the things you notice after you read the same book ten times.

Overall, I give "Love you Forever" a B-. It gets points for a good concept and sweet story but loses major points for the creepy mom and weird age progression.

Now, just because he is so cute, here is a picture of Joseph....

I took this on the first cool morning this Fall. It was the first time since he was born it was cool enough to put him in a sweater for our morning walk. This sweater was hand knitted by Ruth, a good friend of my Grandma and Grandpa Conrad. It is quite beautiful and could fetch a pretty penny in a baby boutique. Joseph fell asleep on our walk and looked so precious.