THIS LOVE

“Love is a special language that’s understood by all.”

This book, with its simple rhyming text and colorful, painterly illustrations of children and adults in many countries, is a call for appreciating the diversity of families the world over. It starts with a multiracial family of three outside their brick apartment building in North America or Europe and ends when a new baby brother is added. The text is composed of simple messages of joy, familial strength, and friendship. Members of that first family show up in other double-page spreads, but the book ranges far and wide, without specifically identifying the countries illustrated. A grandmother shares a book with a small child in a Middle Eastern setting of comfortable patterned pillows. Another child goes to an African marketplace with a dog, while yet another child in a tropical Asian country learns about agriculture from a grandfather. Two male white parents watch fireworks from a bedroom window with their children in an unknown country. Other countries such as India, Iran, and a Caribbean island appear to be represented. Die cuts—the colored arcs of a rainbow turning into other shapes, then raindrops, then half of a crescent moon—contribute unevenly. The colorful hearts on the endpapers express this book’s well-worn but sincere sentiments exactly.

Engaging but nevertheless commonplace.