Whenever I buy baby shower gifts, I buy – what! no, not adorably tiny little sweater sets!

I buy books, of course!

I am determined that the children of my friends will start life with the seeds of a great library – and I pick books that I think the parents will enjoy, too,¹ because a parent who reads to a child gives them a heads-start to reading and learning for the rest of their life.²

Funny story: I recently bought books for a colleague’s baby shower; and someone else did, too, on behalf of their team. We shopped separately and both bought, Goodnight, Gorilla. (Oops.) She also bought Moo, Ba, La, La, La – and when the team asked what books she had bought, they all asked for this one by name. I didn’t buy that one – I bought But Not the Hippopotamus, which is my favorite Boynton.

I am always on the lookout for another title to add to my favorite books to give people. And this one makes the cut.

“If one day we’re walking and talking, just us,
when you’re abracadabra, a rhinoceros…
I might be surprised, but just for a while….
I’d know it was you by your magical smile.”

Throughout the book, the mother playfully imagines with her child that the child has changed into a series of animals, but the mom is able to recognize her baby every time by the things that make the child unique, from nose to toes, to a “one-of-a-kind” blue-footed happy dance.

“Fox or koala, giraffe or raccoon…
anything, anywhere, under the moon,
Whatever it is you imagine to be,
I’ll just be so proud you belong to me.

I’ll kiss every whisker and smooth every hair…
Because child of mine, I’d know you anywhere.”

What a sweet, adorable book. And a message that no child can hear too often. When you hear about children who get kidnapped and manage to escape, they report that their captor managed to make them think that their parents didn’t love them and wouldn’t want them back.³ So you can’t tell your child often enough that you will always love them and know them and want them.

On a less morbid note, this message also tells a child that it’s okay to grow and change, to be and do things that they haven’t been or done before – and that their parents will always still love the things that make them them.

There’s a really sweet scene in a Ramona (Beverley Cleary) book, where Ramona’s mother rubs noses with her at night, while she’s in her footy P.J.s and the mom calls Ramona her “little bunny.” Ramona is very stressed about school – she’s a first grader, I believe, and being a first grader is very much like being a freshman: everyone is bigger than you and more confident, and the building seems so large, and you can’t figure out where the heck that swimming pool is that the upperclassman told you about⁴ and you’re just afraid that someone is going to eat you. So, to keep that warm, safe, feeling the next morning, Ramona wears her pajamas to school under her clothes – and, when she feels intimidated, wrinkles her nose like a little bunny to remind her of her mother’s love. But the day is unseasonably warm, and then Ramona has to confess to her teacher (who is tall and an unknown quantity, and therefore a very scary person) that she’s got her jammies on under her clothes. Luckily the teacher helps her find a solution that saves face. Happy Ending.

I don’t know why I went there except I think there must be a Ramona story where she worries that her mother – who loves her as she is – might not love her if she changes. That seems like a really Ramona thing to worry about.

Gee, an excuse to re-read my Ramona books! Great day!

1. None of those silly Fairy books that my niece loved. ↩︎
2. Unless a teacher is foolish enough to beat it out of them, like the teacher that one niece [a different niece than the fairy-book loving niece] had and then the other. Both had been voracious readers before 4th grade – and both gave up reading afterwards because, they said, the teacher turned it into torture. My sister, who works at a local high school, tried providing feedback about what had happened after the first niece gave up reading, but neither the teacher or the principal were responsive. The older girl is now in college and is just now starting to read again. I try not to be too judgmental about teachers, since my sister and her husband both work in schools and I know a lot of teachers. But this burns my grits. And I believe this teacher is still driving the reading out of children. ↩︎
3. Obviously no news media or milk cartons in those houses. ↩︎
4. Ha! My high school added a swimming pool long after I graduated – and put it right where the upperclassmen told me it was (but it wasn’t) and where I told froshers that it was (but it wasn’t). ↩︎