How Do I Love Thee? What I Love about You by Susan Farrington

I LOVE WHEN YOU GET SILLY.

EVEN WHEN THINGS GET MESSY!

Parents love when their kids are good, when they are kind, when they are brave, and when they smile back with great big grins.

But they also love them when they get giggly and goofy, or when their arts and crafts get WAY "creative" or when "helping" produces broken china.

They love the times when they hold hands crossing the street and when they read together, and of course, those times when kids go nicely to sleep.

Susan Farrington's new picture book, What I Love About You (Balzer and Bray, 2016), counts up the things that are lovable--but with a twist. Farrington's stand-in parent-and-child surrogates are some pretty arresting critters. A bright red baby ball of yarn with skinny legs and woolly loops for hair is most lovable belting out a ballad fortissimo, while a doglike quadruped paints with a paintbrush in his pipestem hand. While two-year-olds may find some of Farrington's proxies for parent and child a bit puzzling, with boxy shapes and sharp teeth, kids just a little older will find her whimsical characters most remarkable. Although author Farrington's text is sweet and loving, her offbeat artwork takes this first book to another level. As Publishers Weekly puts it, " It's a quirky ode to love, but an undeniably comforting one, too."