Books That Matter: ‘Love You Forever’
It is fascinating to think how specific times in our life seem to either go extremely quick or awfully slow. But looking at time on a grander, more perspective scale, it seems as if time is the last thing we think of. In our day-to-day lives, it has become normal for us not to worry about when time will end, to not constantly look at that ticking “clock” of our life. But when we do tend to look back on our life, we admire the people, the moments, and the struggles that we thought were so difficult. And rather, we appreciate them and use them as encouragement and motivation to better our own lives. In the children’s book, Love You Forever, written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Sheila McGraw, the words and pictures emphasize how shapes, color, and the use of contented dialogue work together to create a warming story. These aspects create a comfortable and nostalgic ambiance in the development of the relationship between a mother and her son, and more discreetly, the progression of time. Love You Forever is able to force readers who don’t necessarily focus on time, to reflect on the passage and development of it.
Throughout Love You Forever, the progression of two people’s ages, a mother and her son, is illustrated. It starts out with the son as a baby, and his mother taking care of him. As readers turn each page, the son gets older, and the dynamics of his and his mother’s lives change. The picture that stood out to me is when he is a teenager, sleeping in his bed, and his mother is watching him though the hallway. This picture looks very similar to the one just a few pages before where he is fast asleep in his bed as a baby, and even then, the mother is looking over him watching him sleep. The only differences are the items in his room, and how they are now associated with him being a teenager.
It is easy to see Love You Forever as a one sided story: where we see the progression of a young boy growing up, living, and forming a life for himself. But looking at it in a greater perspective, we see him and his mother growing together as a beautiful and continuous cycle. It is as if his mother, all this time, has prepared him to be the same loving and nurturing person to not only his own future children, but towards his mother as she gets older.
Love you Forever is a book that matters because it shows how time plays an important, yet quiet role in our life. Sometimes we lose track of it, and sometimes we are right on time. But, as we look back on those times we have spent, we tend to admire the people and moments that made the greatest and most significant impact upon us.
