One kid wants to know: Are there limits to a parent’s love?
A child with pale skin, stubby orange pigtails, and outsize pink glasses addresses a question to a pale-skinned parent: “Would you still love me… / …if I was a worm? / I’d live in the mud— / just look at me squirm!” Replies the parent: “Of course I’d still love you— / worm hugs are bliss. / I’d wipe off the mud / and then give you a kiss.” On it goes: The kid issues a challenge that tests the parent’s love (“If I was a troll,” “If I was a ghost,” etc.), and the parent responds with full-throated rhymed reassurance (“Yes! / If you were a ghost, / I’d still love you the most”). This hymn to unconditional love, which can’t help recalling Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s like-themed The Runaway Bunny, is made all the more affecting by Copper’s color-blasted illustrations: They present the child’s fantasized incarnation as one creature or another (dirt-smeared pink worm, moldy cheese, and so on) while retaining those adorable pigtails and wacky glasses. Despite the threat of a foray into scatology (“Would you still love me if / I was green goop? / A potty, a piggy, / or even some…”), this book’s foundational sweetness prevails. A reassuring charmer that’s funny and just the right amount of gross. (Picture book. 3-7)–Kirkus Reviews
