By Nancy Tillman
A new-baby keepsake where the whole world — moon, wind, geese, polar bears — stops the night one child is born to celebrate that there has never been another you.
The night this child is born, everything pauses to notice. The moon stays up to watch, the wind carries the baby's name across the treetops, geese fly home to spread the news, and the polar bears dance. Under all the soft, glowing pictures sits one enormous idea: of all the people who have ever lived, there is only one of you, and the whole world was waiting. It reads like a lullaby, the kind of book a child asks for again before the last page has settled.
This is a first, forever gift, the book a godparent or grandparent hands a newborn to say you were wanted and you are one of a kind. Nancy Tillman's paintings glow like a nightlight, so the object itself is lovely to hold at bedtime, and the words do one thing well: they tell a child, page after page, that the world was glad the day they arrived. Some grown-ups find the sweetness a lot; it leans all the way into tender and never pulls back. That same warmth is what makes it the copy that ends up worn soft at the corners from being read every night.