WHO LOVES ME?

In a gentle bedtime repartee, a little girl asks her feline friend, “Who loves me?” The cat replies, “Your mother loves you. She planted you a garden of white lilies. They shine like lights in the dark.” Each time the girl asks, the cat reassures the little girl that her family, friends and pets do indeed love her by recounting how her family and friends express their love for her. But the final reassurance the little girl wants and hears just before falling off to sleep is from the cat. “I love you,” says the cat. “I brought you a mouse once.” The little girl remembers, “I let it go.” And the cat reminds her that the mouse loves her, too. The lyrical text rises and falls in waves and curves, echoing the cat’s tail. Shepherd’s deftly expressed gestures embellish the text by conveying the girl’s pleasure, her exuberant—sometimes impish, other times stubborn—antics. MacLachlan’s patterned bedtime story lends itself to a quiet, nightly reading ritual that will spark the composition of new verses for the story’s familiar refrain. (Picture book. 3-6)