WHEREVER YOU'LL BE

A young child wakes up early in the morning, greeting cat, dog, and mother.

Together, mother and child get ready, for work and school respectively. Before they part, the mother reminds her youngster that even though they will be in different places all day, they will both be holding each other in their thoughts. The remainder of the book shows how the mother and child lead parallel days in their separate worlds. While the young child learns a new song, the mother walks into her office with earbuds in, presumably also listening to music. The mother has lunch and snack with a colleague while the child has lunch and snack with school pals. The tot fingerpaints while the mother and her colleague do paperwork. In the evening, the parent and child reunite, eager to find out about each other’s days. The book’s gentle, rhyming text tells a lyrical story about love, growth, and family. The illustrations, which utilize a soothing pastel palette, cleverly highlight the parallels between the lives of adults and children. The pictures feature diverse supporting characters—one of the mother’s colleagues and one of the child’s classmates appear to be Black while other characters are racially ambiguous—but the story centers a White family with heterosexual parents and thus breaks no real new ground. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A sweet, simple story about family love.