I LOVE YOU MORE

An animal-focused take on that perennial one-upmanship game familiar to parents: how to express one’s everlasting love for a child.

Joining a legion of similar books, some identically titled, Welsh’s tale offers a world of wild beauty. As the book opens, a bespectacled redheaded mother cuddles her pajama-clad child, Rae, whom she loves “as much as any creature loves the sea, the land, or shore.” She references penguins happily waddling in the snow, seal pups snoozing on a “sunlit icy floe,” an eagle soaring majestically, goats and foxes scrabbling up a mountain, turtles surfing, lizards basking in the sun, wolf cubs romping, tree frogs leaping, parrots flying, and leopards lazing. Mom concludes hyperbolically that her love is greater than the number of celestial bodies in the sky—setting up the child’s irrefutable winning claim: “I think I love you more.” The verses roll rhythmically, with only the occasional banal cliched line (“winged things love to flutter”). Stylized images against textured multilayered backgrounds—sea and sky, mountain, desert, and jungle—pulse with brilliant color and loving depictions of animals and their habitats. Art and words make a vibrant connection between the wild world and human love. Human characters are light-skinned.

A love contest that encompasses all things nature, with affection for its young protagonist at its heart.