If I Was the Sunshine
I am in love with this new picture book! Fogliano’s sweet text about love paired with Loren Long’s gorgeous, color-bursting illustrations is perfection. (Spoiler: the very best one is of enormous waves with text that reads, ‘If I was the ocean and you were a boat, you’d call me wild.’). If a customer is in need of a perfect story, I’ll hand them this one in a heartbeat.
Description
A breathtaking picture book about the relationships we share from New York Times bestselling storytellers Julie Fogliano and Loren Long in the tradition of The Runaway Bunny and Guess How Much I Love You.
if i was the sunshine
and you were the day
i’d call you hello!
and you’d call me stay
if you were the winter
and i was the spring
i’d call you whisper
and you’d call me sing…
Through clever, thought-provoking verse and warmly evocative art, New York Times bestsellers Julie Fogliano and Loren Long explore the awe-inspiring nature of relationships, love, and connection.
Praise for If I Was the Sunshine
“Each stanza of this lilting poem imagines a pair of partners in the natural world—winter and spring, thunder and cloud—and gives them the power to speak and to name each other. . . . The word love never appears in Fogliano’s text, but it can be felt on every page.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Fogliano uses surprising connections to telegraph love with frequently unexpected results . . . [Her] choice to eschew the subjunctive mood makes the comparisons seem tantalizingly possible. Jewel-toned images full of light, formed by sumptuous acrylic paints, bring the distant near and the miniscule close. Gentle on ear and eye, a keen display of relationships bound together in love and complexity.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Dramatic artwork and clever verse combine in a book that will pique young listeners' imaginations. . . . The wordplay is fun, and the beautifully bold acrylic paintings have intense child-appeal.”
— Booklist
“A gentle literary frolic whose creativity and tight patterning will make it a repeatable favorite for youngsters. . . . Adults and young audiences alike will be charmed by the verses and embrace this new approach to bedtime; call it read.”
— BCCB
"The dance of words and pictures is lovely . . . The creative use of language and accessible, pleasing imagery will lead to rereadings, which in turn, will inspire listeners to invent their own playful verses."
— School Library Journal
“Fogliano’s unexpected yet somehow just-right phrasing delights the ear with its perfect cadence and tight rhymes that are wrapped up in a near call-and-response rhythm. . . . A mood piece offering a gentle meditation on connections in the natural world and in human experience, too.”
— The Horn Book