This is my first review of a children’s book and it has inspired so much that it won’t be the last. I Love You Too, I Love You Three is a picture book written by Wendy Tugwood and illustrated by Sheila McGraw. This is Tugwood’s first book and one of many illustrated by McGraw who is best-known for depicting 1986’s Love You Forever written by Robert Munsch.
I am not a parent but I was frequently touched by the theme of I Love You Too, I Love You Three. The relationship between a mother and a son is strongly depicted throughout only 24 pages. And that is the book’s strongest aspect that it’s so powerful in only so few pages. Tugwood’s writing tugs at the heartstrings of anyone who reads it, regardless of being a parent or not, as the bond between a mother and her child is universally acknowledged.
The storytelling through poetry is simply beautiful. The relationship between mother and child is expressed in a counting game that plays with words and it goes all the way up to ten. You can see the brilliance in wordplay by Tugwood in the example below.
When it’s time again for slumber,
I’ll be there to count our numbers.
“I love you one,
I love you two.”
And now I say goodnight to you.
Another entry that I favored was:
“I love you five,
I love you six.”
I turn and blow a gentle kiss.
As you can see from the examples above that no matter the length of the poems, their impact is the same. I won’t reveal the concluding verses here but there couldn’t have been a better a ending to a pictorial work intended for children. Also, McGraw’s drawing talent mixes so well with Tugwood’s rhymes that it seems that these two women were destined to collaborate on a literary project.
To end with, I would recommend this to parents who wish to read to their children before they go to sleep. I Love You Too, I Love You Three is the perfect replacement for many of the clichéd bedtime stories out there. Also, reading it made me nostalgic about the cherished moments in childhood I spent with my own mom.
