WE SANG YOU HOME

In words and pictures, a pair of parents celebrates their little one.

As they did in Little You (2013), Canadian First Nations creators Van Camp (Tlicho Dene) and Flett (Cree-Métis) combine talents for a sweet and loving board book. The parents address their child as a unit, with first-person plural, using cadence and metaphor to convey their feelings. “We sang you from a wish / We sang you from a prayer.” Few very young children will understand the concepts behind that sentiment, but they should understand “We give you kisses to help you grow” without much trouble. Van Camp’s text turns to the reciprocal relationship between parents and child (“As we give you roots you give us wings // And through you we are born again”) as Flett’s crisp, digitally collaged gouache paintings depict, first, a ponytailed parent cuddling the child with one hand while picking berries with the other, then both parents together holding the child at a window as a bird flies by. Both parents are depicted with brown skin and black hair, as is the child; gender is implied visually via hairstyle but never confirmed in the text. Simple visual details also imply the little family’s heritage—striped blankets, baby slings—but do not restrict it.

The parents’ certainty that their baby is “the best of all of us” is an affirmation every baby should hear.