(This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.) Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work.

One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. 3-8)Ī home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.

The pictures are rich in tone and hue, expressive line and expansive gesture: Repeated motifs of textile and bead patterns, wild animal groups and a splendid curvilinear tree echo and support the text. You are my Tender Heart, and I love you.” The boy asks, how long, and what would you do if it were hot, and what if I was afraid, and the father responds each time in deep rumbling tenderness: He will love his boy as long as “the Serengeti rolls to the sky,” he would stretch out his blanket for shade, he would hold his son.

A boy asks his father the question of the title, and his father replies, “You came from your mama, whom I love, your grandpapas and grandmamas, whom I honor.

While the gorgeous and glowing colors of the Maasai in Africa are very different from the Alaskan setting of the first book, the universality and beautiful emotional rhythms of the story remain the same. A pendant and companion to this duo’s beloved Mama, Do You Love Me? (1991).

Mama do you love me by barbara m joosse