I Love You Night and Day

April 28, 2014
Inspired by a biblical passage, Ephesians, 3:17–19, this (fully secular) story uses a panoply of adjectives to evoke the expansive love between a small blue bunny and a larger, rounded purple bear: “I love you far, I love you wide,/ From over here... to the other side.” Brown’s (Eddie and Dog) soft mixed-media illustrations use a predominantly cool palette, showcasing the dark blues of underwater and nighttime scenes or the azure sky of a sunny day. Though the animals’ facial features are minimal (pinpoints for eyes, loose squiggles for mouths), their mutual affection comes through. Prasadam-Halls’s rhymed couplets have a pleasing lilt, though verge on precious and simplistic: the lines “I love you strong, I love you small./ Together we have it all” accompany a picture of the bunny struggling to hold a snowman’s body in place while the bear places its head on top. The gender-neutral, cross-species portrait of affection gives the book the potential for broad appeal—the animals’ relationship could easily be between a single or adoptive parent and his or her child, or also between two close friends. Ages 3–6.