MORE THAN BALLOONS

Adult animals express their love for their children in rhyming couplets and swirling illustrations.

This variation on the “Guess how much I love you” theme succeeds more on artistic merit and sweet intentions than on poetic virtue, which is fine, as its intended audience is not literary critics. Over the course of 12 two-page tableaux, author Crozier presents a series of relentlessly rhymed “more than” metaphors describing how much caregivers reading the book aloud love the children to whom they read it. Many of the comparisons are creative and lovely: “more than a tuba loves a tune,” “more than a lake loves a loon,” and “more than a bee loves a bloom,” for example. Others, including, unfortunately, the titular example, “more than balloons love the moon,” may seem a stretch, despite, in this case, a charming illustration of balloons drifting through the starry, moonlit sky. The constancy of the rhyme scheme is remarkable; all but the last two lines of the book rhyme with “balloon” and “moon.” For young readers, that may make it easy to recite by memory, which could, in turn, help them begin matching the words of the book with the text on the page. The artwork, as noted, is exquisite: simple, yet elegant lines, delightful animal characters, warm washes of color, and plenty of details to build young vocabularies.

The warm tone and magical drawings make this ideal bedtime reading.