The Getaway! Just in Case You Want to Fly by Julie Fogliano

FISH GOTTA SWIM, BIRDS GOTTA FLY....

And kids are also going to want to try their wings out in the world.

Just in case you want to fly

here's some wind..

and here's the sky....

Fledglings need a bit of wind beneath their wings as they work up to a solo flight. After all--"a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

But for those first short flights, there is support.

...a fork
and a dish,
and a spoon...

And with a la-la for a song and a joke for the journey, a blanket and a kiss and a spoonful of honey to sweeten the trip and--

...a map with an X to mark the spot find your way home...

... In Julia Fogliani's and Christian Robinson's new joint effort, Just In Case You Want to Fly (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House, 2019), little fledglings can look forward to flights and many happy returns and soft landings. Fogliani's rhymes are simple and rhythmic, and Caldecott Award-winning Christian Robinson's illustrations are geometrical and elemental, and yet comforting, with soaring birds to represent the journey and warm tea and a bed and blankie imprinted with items from the journey at the end, a flight to the heights that is, as Robert Frost's poem says, "good both going and coming back" to earth, "the right place for love."

Love's A-Poppin'! Love YOU: A Pop-Up Book by David A. Carter

What you are is...

THE COLORS OF THE RAINBOW.

David Carter's Valentine's Day treat, I Love You: A Pop-Up Book (Abrams, 2017), salutes the reader in a paragon of paper sculpture, a brief treatise on love illustrated by little masterpieces of pop-up book art that virtually explode with each page turn.

Among the pages there are spring branches adorned with blossoms and leaves, reaching out toward the reader, a rainbow with dangling hearts, a rolling, watery wave that ripples onto the shore, and an explosion of glittery hearts for the grand finale. It's like fireworks contained inside book covers.

Author-illustrator David Carter is a veteran of the toy-and-movable pop-up genre, and this creation is a work of art and a Valentine salute and inspiration to young readers and artists.

A First Valentine: Lots of Love, Little One by Sandra Magsamen

You are a gift and a blessing in every way.

I love you more and more each and every day.

Describing the love parents feel for their young child is almost impossible, but Sandra Magsamen's, Lots of Love Little One (Sourcebooks/Jabberwocky, 2018), a rhyming Valentine to the youngest amongst us, is a sweetly charming way to try.

Counting the ways to describe "the depth and breadth" of a mother's or father's love takes author Magsamen into funny and fanciful comparisons--more than the twirls of all the world's dancers, more than all twinkles in the stars that shine, more than all the PB and J sandwiches ever made or strands of spaghetti served in Rome! Her illustrations, however, are simple, done in bright primary colors, of top-stitched nursery playthings, including a blue elephant mother and baby and a big red heart, making this just published little book a just-in-time gift for a first Valentine's Day.

And for older toddlers, share this one with Sam McBratney's classic story of Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare's best-selling can-you-top-this tale, Guess How Much I Love You, also available in a set of book and an adorable plush Little Hare toy, Guess How Much I Love You: Deluxe Book and Toy Gift Set.

Always! I've Loved You Since Forever by Hoda Kotb

Before birds flew over rainbows....

There was you ...

And there was me.

It seems that love for the newborn child is forever, as if everything that has gone before in a parent's life has led to this moment.

Hoda Kotb's sweet little letter to her new child, I've Loved You Since Forever (Harper, 2018), captures that real feeling that love is eternal. Kotb's text is lyrical, ascribing that love to a time before the first dawn, the first sunrise, sunset, twilight and starry sky. In that effort the author owes much to artist Suzie Mason's elegantly tender illustrations of animal mother and child pairs, set forth in varied habitats, with a backdrop of dawn and daylight, dusk and dark, in sunshine, shadow, and a night sky lit by stars.

Birds and bees, elephant mother and child linking trunks, an otter mom floating with her pup on her chest, a deer and spotted fawn curled up together, all seem part of that timeless love, and Mason's soft and delicate images are delicately evocative of that devotion.

It's an idyllic but moving hymn to love for little ones, leading to the conclusion that human mother and child are a pair that were meant to be:

There was you, and there was me....

And you and I turned into WE.

"A bighearted celebration of new motherhood that may especially appeal to families with adopted children," opines Publishers Weekly.

Heart-y : Love You Always by Roger Priddy

It's all too true. Some flowers are red, and then some are blue, but...

I LOVE IT BEST WHEN I'M WITH YOU!

Small Bear gives his best friend, Duckling, a ride on his bike and then on a prancing carousel horse, in Roger Priddy's Shiny Shapes: Love You Always (Priddy Books/St. Martin's Press, 2016).

With die-cut hearts of diminishing dimensions, done up in shiny metallic shapes from cover to final page, this eye-catching board book declares that everything--picnics, a dance, a party, and a campfire--is better when loved ones are together. With sweet illustrations by Lucy Fleming, this is a loving Valentine gift to the youngest ones among us.

That "Crazy Little Thing Called Love:"Love Is Bubblegum by Kailyn Lowry

Ah! What is love? That question has provided endless opportunities for poets and composers. Shakespeare had quite a bit to say about it in his Romeo and Juliet:

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.

R 'n' B singers Mickey and Sylvia said "Love Is Strange." Composers Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen called it "That Old Black Magic." Beatle George Harrison said it was "Something in the Way She Moves," and Lennon and McCartney replied that "Love is all you need."  Queen called it "That Crazy Little Thing." And in Frozen, Hans and Anna sing that "Love Is An Open Door."

In her Love is Bubblegum author Kailyn Lowry hands over this eternal question to the kids, and what they come up with is about as varied and moving as the answers the professionals poets and lyricists have given us.

It's mama and sis reading books at bedtime, opines Piper, aged 4.

Kaden goes for heroics, likening love to rescuing others from flaming buildings.

Thaddeus, aged nine, altruistically points out that love is doing nice things for others.

And then there is Paige, aged four, who comes up with an truly creative, outside the heart-shaped candy box  metaphor:

"Love looks like ... bubblegum."

How is love like bubblegum? "Let me count the ways," as Shakespeare would say.

Well. it's usually pink, the second-most favorite color for Valentine's Day. It's certainly sweet, and it can come in a variety of tastes. And, if it sticks to the bottom of your shoe, it can last almost forever.

Reality show star Kailyn Lowry and illustrator Fuuji Takashi show that kids have a lot to say on the eternal subject and have a lot of fun with their ideas in this book, another "Silly Love Song" to that heartfelt emotion that we celebrate annually on Valentine's Day. Kids will love reading what their peers think and may be inspired to pen their own definitions of "that funny feeling called love."

Heart to Heart: Did You Know I Love You? by Christa Pierce

"WHO, ME?"

Fox can scarcely believe that the pretty little blue bird loves him, but as they spend some time together, he cannot help but love her, too.

She asks him if he can feel it in her kisses and hugs. She asks if she tells him often enough, and he admits she does. She even asks,

"COULD YOU TASTE IT IN YOUR TEA?

DID IT WARM YOU FROM THE MUG?"

But her final protestation really sets his heart at rest.

"ALL MY LOVE IS FOR YOU.

AND IT ALWAYS WILL BE."

Christa Pierce's Did You Know That I Love You? (HarperCollins, 2014) offers sweetly stylized illustrations and promises of enduring love that are perfect for parents and grandparents to present to very young children. Her soft and rounded young fox is a nice stand-in for the child, and the blue bird, traditionally the deliverer of an important message in folklore, represents the parental urge to offer lasting love to a young one. Publishers Weekly says, "A sweetly assuring ode to unconditional love."