Hand in Hand

PreS—Short, rhyming sentences, accompanied by large framed watercolor illustrations featuring Wells's signature rabbits on each page, pay tribute to all the ways a parent nurtures and teaches a child from birth onward. The young child narrator, whose gender is ambiguous, makes requests ("Be my teacher/from day one. Be my sky, my moon,/my sun") and enumerates all the things a mother does ("My first feeder./My first reader"). The illustrations, which include only a mother, elaborate on each brief statement by depicting the activities in which child and parent are engaged. For example, the picture above "Midnight staymate" contains a vaporizer, box of tissues, and medicine bottle—obvious indicators that the little one lying in bed embraced by Mom is ill. Small framed scenes on two opposite pages show the child learning to be polite, to share, and to help. The text, while brief, is filled with lovely metaphors such as "Kindness is our daily bread; gentle words, our feather bed" that would be difficult for very young children to understand.