By Emily Winfield Martin
A parent's rhyming wonder at all the people a child might grow up to be — the book you give to say I love you already, and I can't wait to see who you become.
The whole book is a grown-up looking at a child and wondering out loud: who will you be? Kind and clever, brave and bold, someone who stands up for what's right, someone who makes wonderful things. The children in the pictures try on costumes and roles and possibilities, page after page, in Emily Winfield Martin's rich, storybook style. And after all the wondering, it lands on the one thing that's already true and never in doubt: whoever you turn out to be, you are loved. It rhymes, it glows, and it reads like a promise.
This is the gift for a milestone — a christening, a first birthday, a start of school — when you want to say I believe in who you'll become and I love you as you are right now. The two ideas together are what make it land: it dreams big about the child's future and then reassures them the love isn't waiting on any of it. The art is beautiful enough to be a keepsake, and because the words are about possibility rather than any one moment, a child never outgrows being handed it.