Heart-y Reading: Valentine Stories for the Picture Book Set

For a sweet, simple, unaffected view of Valentine's Day, Cynthia Rylant's If You'll Be My Valentine strips away much of the overlay of commercial froufrou and shows us the heart of the holiday.

A small boy draws big red hearts and writes his own Valentine verses to those he holds dearest, beginning with his cat:

"If you will be my Valentine,
I'll kiss you on your nose.
I'll scratch your ears
and rub your head,
and pet your little toes"

The boy then designs personalized Valentines for his puppy, his grandmother, his sister, and especially for his little brother:

"I'll sit with you today.
We'll read a book
about some frogs,
if you don't want to play."

Special messages are also made for his Teddy bear, the bird outside his window, his mother, and his friend, and even his favorite tree:

If you will be my Valentine,
Then I'll be one with you.
We'll love the trees
and all the world;
We'll love each other, too."

Newberry Award winner Rylant takes us back to the early Christian roots of Valentine's Day as a time to remember the bonds between friends and family. If You'll Be My Valentine is a good book for young children to begin to understand what giving and receiving Valentines is all about. The straightforward layout of text and Fumi Kosaka's appealing illustrations make this little book sweeter than a candy heart.

For a comic twist on family love, that bard of the barnyard Teresa Bateman has a bouncy little story in rhyme titled Will You Be My Valenswine? (Albert Whitman Prairie Paperback).

"On Valentine's Day a little piggy
Began to mope and whine.
For that pouting pig named Polly
Didn't have a Valenswine."

Polly suddenly realizes that even around the pigpen there's some serious pairing up going on. As she notes, "Even rams say 'I love ewe!'" Her wise mother sends her out to stop and smell the roses, so to speak, and Polly realizes that all this pairing is a bit premature for a piglet.

"Oh, Mother," piglet Polly said,
"Please say that you'll be mine.
Right now I see you are, for me,
The perfect Valentine."

It's a petite premise, but a perceptive one for young children who are still trying to get a fix on the mushy stuff that Valentine's Day entails. As in Rylant's book above, romance is still out there in the future, but for this February 14, love is love, and it's all good!

For an idealized look at Valentine's Day fun, Mary Engelbreit's fulsomely illustrated Queen of Hearts (Ann Estelle Stories) (Ann Estelle Stories) stars her blonde bespeckled Ann Estelle, a girl for whom Valentine's Day was surely invented. She loves it all--"chocolates (of course), candy hearts, cookies with red sprinkles, and getting Valentines." Best of all, she loves to craft homemade decorations with plenty of red and white ribbons and lace trim.

At school she makes her desktop box into a masterwork. Labeled "The Queen of Hearts," it dazzles, with lace, beads, glitter, toys, flowers, candy hearts, and feathers perfumed with her mother's best cologne. But, oops, the Queen suddenly realizes that she has forgotten to make Valentine cards for her classmates! Thinking fast, she sacrifices her box's trim and royally hands out trinkets--the red ribbons to Mrs. McGilligan for her hair, flowers to Gracie, feathers to Audrey Ann, and toy cars to Sophia and Michael. The box is stripped bare, but winds up stuffed full of Valentines from her friends. "This," proclaims Ann Estelle, "has turned out to be the best Valentine's Day ever."

For more tried-and-true picture books for Valentine's Day, you'll find some great ones here.