YOU ARE MY RAINBOW

A caregiver’s love for a child is poetically expressed using a variety of nature and weather metaphors.

Each page of rhyming text features a different setting and caregiver-and-offspring animal pair. “You are my snowfall / dancing to and fro. / Swirling all around, / where you go, I go,” reads the verse on one spread showing a fox and its pup against a background of soft purples, blues, and pristine snow. The rest of the text follows this pattern, using the sun, moon, a mountain, rain, and more. God is mentioned once, and a few other related words appear like bless and prayer, although no specific religion is identified. The soft, diaphanous illustrations are soothing and inviting. The animals look extra-cuddly, and the scenery is so warm it often appears to glow. The ending comes full circle: The giraffes who at the beginning of the book observe two birds flying, find them nested with their little blue egg—an image of new life and new love continuing. For all its charms, this offering adds little new to the love-letter-to-a-child board-book niche, and the rhymes are sometimes awkward to read aloud.

A sweet retread of a timeless and universal theme.