By Matt de la Peña
A picture-book poem about all the places love shows up in a child's life — a cab driver's radio, a warm bowl of soup, a grandmother's hand, and even one hard night at home — from the author of Last Stop on Market Street.
This is a big, open-hearted poem about all the shapes love takes. It's the warmth of light on a baby's face, a cab driver singing along to the radio, the smell of soup on a cold night, a grandmother's hand, and a whole city of people who look and live in every different way. It doesn't stay only on the happy days, either. One quiet spread shows a child on a hard night at home, tucked under a piano, and the book keeps insisting that love is still in the room even then. Matt de la Peña wrote the words and Loren Long painted the wide, glowing pictures. Together it reads less like a story with a plot and more like a poem you'd say softly over a child at bedtime.
It grows with a child instead of aging out. The love here is bigger than the Valentine's-heart version — it's in soup and radios and city sidewalks — so almost any child can find their own family or block somewhere in the pages. The words reward being read slow and read again, and Loren Long's paintings stay with you. The hard night keeps it from being only sweet, which is part of why people hand this one to a new baby or a graduating grandchild and expect it to matter for years.