Love You Forever, written by Robert Munsch.
If you have not read this book to your child you need to, especially if you have a son, although as the mother of a daughter it was always one of our favorites as well. The story is short and well paced, and funny. It will keep your children’s attention and the repetition throughout guarantees that after just a few readings your kids will be reading it along with you. This helps with word recognition for the pre readers in your family.
This short little book starts with a mother holding her newborn baby and rocking him. She tells him “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”
The story goes through his toddler time when his Mom says, this kid is driving me crazy! Still she rocks and sings to him. When he is school age and she wants to sell him to the zoo, still, she rocks and sings to him. Through the teenage years, when she thinks she lives in the zoo, right up until he is a grown man. This Momma keeps on loving her boy and singing to him, until she can’t anymore, and then, he sings it to her. At the end of the book that great grown up boy goes home and sings his mother’s lullaby to his baby daughter.
The thing I love best about this book is that it reminds our children that even when they are being difficult their mothers love never changes, from the day they are born, until she is no longer around, a mother loves her children, unconditionally.
I buy this book for every new mother and even though I’ve read it hundreds of times it still brings a tear to my eye. Go get this book, you will be so glad you did.