Yes, Dear One, Without A Doubt

Mama, Do You Love Me by Barbara Joosse

My son is getting to that age where he asks for books by name. He's graduated from the vague, "Book" and "'Nother book" to "Mitten book" (the one by Jan Brett), "D book" (in the Moncure alphabet series) and The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss among others.

Last night, he asked for the "Mama book." Within seconds, all the exhaustion from my overlong work day disappeared. My son plopped himself into my lap and handed me Mama, Do You Love Me? Our reading time is usually a joint affair. I'll start reading and then pause at words he's familiar with so he can say them. But this book is different. This book is a peaceful poem to be read without interruption to the melody and both of us are lulled by it. That and the vocabulary is very different from words with which he's familiar.

The Story

The book opens with a large Inuit woman swinging her daughter by her arms. The daughter asks, "Mama, do you love me?" After assuring her daughter that she does, the daughter then asks how much and how long. The answers are beautiful in their imagery:

I love you more than the raven loves his treasure, more than the dog loves his tail, more than the whale loves his spout.

And in response to how long:

I'll love you until the umiak flies into the darkness, until the stars turn to fish in the sky, until the puffin howls at the moon.

The daughter then imagines ways to test the mother's love. She asks "what if." What if she broke their eggs, what if she put lemmings in her mom's mukluks (my son's favorite word in the whole book), what if she ran away or turned into a mean and nasty polar bear?

The mother acknowledges how she would feel and then adds but still I would love you.. The emotions the daughter takes her through almost seem to foreshadow the emotions one experiences with a child growing up: sorry, angry, very angry, worried, very sad, surprised, surprised and a little scared, and finally very surprised and very scared. Yet, through it all, parents can identify with the mother who underneath all of the changes her child goes through, still sees the child underneath and can say:

I will love you forever and for always, because you are my Dear One.

The Vocabulary

The words in this book are not easy ones that a young child will pick up early. It's a book meant for parents and children to read together. It's a book that sparks all the warm and cuddly feelings that Norman Rockwell inspires, only instead of middle America, the images are those of northern Alaska and the culture is Inuit.

I am not one of those who believe children's books should have their vocabulary restricted to what the children already know. The only way I have ever effectively expanded my own vocabulary was through reading. The keys are contexts and relationships. A child should be able to figure out what the words mean without necessarily having to go get a dictionary and break the flow of the story.

Author Barbara Joosse works well with her illustrator Barbara Lavallee to ensure that the context and relationships are provided. The beautiful illustrations help the reader understand the words and even add elements of the Inuit culture that are not in the words of the story. Then, just to make sure no one is left confused, the final spread of the book explains some of the words and provides a context for them. The glossary puts a geography to the Inuits and explains such things as a umiak is a boat made of whalebone and that ptarmigan eggs are rare and sought-after delicacies.

Its Appeal

I often wonder what is going on in the mind of my two-year-old. Does he label this book the "mama book" because of the title or does he perhaps associate it with his mama? It's most likely the former. After all Six Sticks is "mouse book" and Happy Birthday, Thomas is "train book." But there is something about his voice and that special smile he makes when he says "mama book" that makes me wonder if just maybe, it might be the latter.

After all, his mama does bear some similarities to the mama in the book. She's a large woman who often wears her dark, waist-length hair braided and she has an unconditional love for her Dear One.

--B. Redman