Love You Forever (1986 original; edició 1995)

Not my style ( )

Love You Forever presents the unconditional love that parents are expected to have for their children, despite the behavior of those children as they grow up. The love that a parent has for a child is an unrestricted love that never falters. ( )

At first glance, this is a book that demonstrates a very deep, and caring love of a mother for her child. The book shows the mother rocking the baby when it is asleep and singing the song "i'll love you forever..." However, this continues as the boy becomes older, and older, and eventually until the boy is out of the house. The mother then essentially stocks the man in his home, and climbs up a ladder, and through a window while he is asleep, and repeats this pattern. Although the book seems to demonstrate how a mothers' love has no boundaries, or something metaphorical like that, It actually could be an example/model for our kids of an extreme, and unhealthy relationship without healthy boundaries. The behavior is also not very rational. For example, she could call, or announce her visit, and demonstrate her affection in a more transparent, and healthy manner. All in all, the book is still heart warming, but as a teacher, I would use it to first tug at the heart-strings, and then to point out these unhealthy, and extreme behaviors. There are parts of this book that I would use as a non-example, and also to get my students to think critically about what they read, which is exactly how this book was presented to me, and I found it to be a very valuable lesson in really thinking critically about what I read, and dissecting the book completely. ( )

This book is about a mother singing to her son and the different stages that the son goes through. It started okay, but immediately; I had a funny feeling about the story. I thought that the mother was going through post-partum depression for the turn that the story took. I felt like the mother was narrating the story as if she was being overprotective of her son. Then, when she was telling the story about visiting her adult son at night, that's when I knew that the story was weird. Later, I learned that the author's baby was dead, and he made this story for him. It was really creepy to learn about the story behind the book. Definitively, I will not use this book in my classroom. ( )

A mother has a son, and while he an infant, she rocks him to sleep each night singing the same song to him. The story revisits the mother and son when he is two years old, nine, a teenager, and a grown man. Each time, the story reiterates that regardless of the unique parenting hardships the mother experiences at each stage of her son’s life, she still goes to his room at night to cradle him in her arms and sing the same song to him. Even when he is a grown man, she drives to his house and sneaks into his room, until eventually she is too old to complete the song. The son then cradles his mother and sings the song to her, returns home, and sings the song to his own child. I think most kids will view this as an overly sentimental book to be reading in the classroom. It feels more like a book that would be appropriate for a parent to read to their child, as the content definitely has the potential to cause an emotional outburst from younger children. In addition, this book could also raise concerns in the minds of students with non-traditional families that their caretakers are somehow “less” because they are not specifically the child’s mother. ( )