ONLY YOU

This parent-child love poem reaches out and cuddles its dual audience close. The simple verse celebrates the small, everyday ways small children endear themselves to their parents: “When the sky glows / peachy-rose at dawn . . . / I love the way / you stretch and yawn,” and so on through one idyllic day, visiting in turn an Asian-American mother and baby at daybreak, an African-American father and toddler in the middle of the day and a European-American mother and preschooler at bedtime. Cruise’s text is unapologetically doting, the truth behind every statement manifest in each rhyme and carrying the whole beyond cliché. Chodos-Irvine’s now-trademark prints are the wholly perfect accompaniment, their soft pastels and rounded lines underscoring the genuine warmth of the sentiment. Her understanding of the exuberant movements of baby- and toddler-hood is unparalleled, each cock of the head and bend of the arm just right. What child doesn’t need the unqualified love of the parent, and what parent doesn’t need to be reminded of this? As a statement of childhood’s most unalienable right, it doesn’t come any clearer. (Picture book. 3-5)