By Sam McBratney
The little-hare, big-hare bedtime classic where two people who love each other try to out-measure it — as high as I can reach, all the way to the moon and back.
Little Nutbrown Hare wants to tell Big Nutbrown Hare how much he loves him, and he can't quite find a big enough way to say it. So it turns into a contest. He stretches his arms as wide as they go; Big Nutbrown Hare's go wider. He reaches as high as he can; the big one reaches higher. He loves this much, and hops this high, and on it goes across a soft green watercolor world until the little one, half asleep, reaches for the biggest thing he can think of — right up to the moon. And the last word, whispered over a sleeping child, is the one every parent has felt and never quite managed to say out loud.
It gives a very small child the one thing they most want to know at bedtime, which is that they are loved and that the loving goes both ways. The genius of it is the contest: your child gets to try to win, and the whole point is that the grown-up's love is always just a little bigger, always reaching a little farther, and that turns out to feel wonderful rather than unfair. Anita Jeram's hares are so soft you can almost feel them, so the book itself is a lovely thing to hold. It has been the go-to new-baby and I-love-you gift for thirty years for a reason, and it wears in beautifully, read a hundred times until the corners go soft.