By Robert Munsch
A mother sings the same lullaby to her son at every stage of his life, and one day, grown, he holds her and sings it back to her.
Every night, a mother lifts her sleeping son, rocks him, and sings him four soft lines: 'I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always.' She sings it over a squalling newborn, a wild two-year-old, a teenager who slams his door. The years pass, the boy grows up and moves to a house across town, and the mother grows old. One night she's too weak to get through the song. So her son drives over, picks her up, rocks her the way she used to rock him, and sings the four lines back. Then he goes home and sings them to his own new baby.
It's the book grandparents buy three copies of, and there's a reason. The whole thing is one little song carried across a lifetime. A small child on your lap just feels the steady, never-changing love. You, holding the book, can see the whole arc they can't yet, and that's usually the moment your voice goes. Not many picture books land harder on the grown-up than on the child. This is one of the few.