LOVE THEM JUST THE WAY THEY ARE

Lindquist offers a picture book about unconditional love.

The story begins with a pair of parents happily holding their newborn baby: “Our eyes first met, I set the bar / That I’d love you just the way you are.” The text goes through various life stages of children in different families, highlighting the most difficult aspects, including screaming fits, personal hygiene, and general messiness, and reassures the child each time that parents will still love them as they are. This reassurance repeats throughout, even when the parent characters look exasperated or fatigued. Eventually, a child passes through the teenage years, and another heads into adulthood, having learned how to love unconditionally. The rhymes feel forced occasionally, as when Lindquist resorts to uncommon words such as char or mar. The target age group is also somewhat hard to pin down, as Parkrada’s highly animated illustrations are typical in books for very young readers, but the text at times speaks directly to children who are adolescents or even adults. All that said, the book’s message about the importance of unconditional love is clear. Various parents and children are depicted with a range of skin tones.

A sweet story of love with an unclear target audience.