A Father's Love

March 11, 2019
Holt writes in singsong verse about the ways different animal fathers show love for their babies. Animal pairs appear in a range of habitats: “A father toad dives quick, unseen/ beneath a creekside evergreen./ While he glides,/ his babies gleam./ This father’s love/ flows like a stream.” In digitally colored art that skews flat on the page, flecks, speckles, and dashed lines texturize the animals’ fur, skin, and feathers. Back matter identifies the featured animals in more detail, describing how the fathers care for their young: “Emu fathers build the nest, keep eggs warm, and raise chicks all by themselves.” Two human fathers are also included, holding their sleeping infants: “A father’s love could hold the world.” A sweet-natured, if slight, look at the father-child bond. Ages 3–7.

April 1, 2019
Various animal dads show how they care for their young in this gently rhyming book ideal for bedtime. Spreads familiarize readers with nine species of animals found in different regions of the world and in different habitats (a concluding world map shows their locations), providing color recognition practice and introducing similes and metaphors along the way. "Across a field of HAZY YELLOW, / this lion stalks a lazy fellow. / He charges Dad with baby claws. / This father's love has velvet paws." Backmatter gives a bit more information about each of the nine species, which helps readers parse the midwife toad that sits with eggs around his backside in one spot illustration and with tadpoles swimming about him in another. A penguin dad keeps his chick warm, a fox keeps his family safe by digging burrows (and by providing food: In the illustration, he has a gray rodent in his mouth). A marmoset dad carries his baby, a sea horse hatches his young, and falcons, wolves, and emus round out the animals. A final spread of diverse human dads and babies sharing hugs, snuggles, books, and sleep is the perfect nightcap. Most of Holt's rhyming couplets scan well. Chan's pen-and-pencil outlines are filled with digital color; parallel hatched lines indicate fur in the stylized illustrations, keeping the animals from appearing overly cute; none are anthropomorphized. A sweet bedtime book about fathers and how their "love is everywhere." (Picture book. 3-7)

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June 1, 2019

PreS-Gr 1-This quiet, gracefully crafted picture book features the unique bond between father and child that can be as soft as the snow and as warm as the shining sun. Told through a tender, rhyming narrative, animal fathers around the world are shown caring for their young. A red fox tends to his family, a seahorse dad keeps his babies safe in his pouch, while a father emu raises chicks. Warm pencil-and-ink artwork colored digitally in earth tones illustrates the unconditional love and protection provided by fathers from all over the map and the animal kingdom. The story ends with the reassuring message that no matter what, "A father's love is always there./A father's love is.../...everywhere," and end pages that include facts about the included animal fathers and how they care for their young. VERDICT This gentle celebration of fathers will resonate with readers both young and old. It's a perfect choice for all picture book shelves, a lapsit story, or a gift for a new dad.Brianne Colombo, Fairfield Free Public Library, NJ

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