I never enjoyed reading growing up due to the fact that I was easily distracted, making it difficult for me to concentrate.
I found a true love of reading when I found out I was pregnant with my first child. I began reading to her when I discovered it was beneficial to your unborn baby. I continued this, when six years later I found out that I was pregnant with my second child.
Since then, my girls, (I have a total of 4 but only 2 are biological) have loved, loved, loved reading, anything, anytime, anywhere. So much so that if a bookstore is accessible anywhere in our general area; we will be visiting it, and probably be in there for hours.
Of course it was no surprise at all that my oldest daughter requested books for Christmas. The three of us were shopping at our local downtown stores, going our separate ways, me shopping for them as they shopped for me. So, I visited our local bookstore, The Bookshelf, where I received gracious help at finding the books on my daughter’s wish list. Finding only one in stock, I purchase it and they offered to gift wrap it.
As I waited on the gift wrapping to be completed, I wondered through the store and stopped in the children’s section. Imagine this; I came across this beautifully written and illustrated book written from the perspective of a mom to her child, Take Heart, My Child.
In her debut children’s book, Fox & Friends cohost Earhardt assumes the voice of a mother expressing her hopes for her daughter, advising her child to take risks and be independent. In a sequence of vignettes, the story moves from the sea to the forest and into the night sky, initially described in fanciful terms: “Before you were born/ Before you shared my day/ I dreamed a love song/ Near a grand deer ballet,” reads one spread as newcomer Kim shows a young woman and six deer prancing through a field. The light-dappled illustrations play well with the text’s ethereal references to nature, alternating between images of the mother-to-be on her own and ones of her daughter swinging from a tree, peering at the moon through a telescope, and flying a kite on the beach. Though the advice can be syrupy or overfamiliar (“May you take the high road/ Through the road may be long/ Pledge to follow your heart/ So your heart will grow strong”), Earhardt’s you-can-do-it message is consistently encouraging. Ages 4–8. Illustrator’s agent: Claire Easton, Painted Words. (Nov.) Publisher’s Weekly book review
As I read through it, I teared up, thinking how much our youngest daughter, who is pregnant with her first child, might appreciate this as her very first book to read to her baby. So, of course, I purchased it and had it gift wrapped as well.
Pursuit of all things Crafty 