In My Heart

Bang, Molly

Little, Brown and Company,2006

Picturebook

k-3

This book is about the connection that a mother has with her child. It gives different situations such as leaving the house, waiting for the bus and when I go to work and reassures the child that they are always being loved, no matter where the mother is at. Everywhere the mother goes she is thinking of her child. At the end of the book it shows the little boy and in his heart is his family. The pictures are very colorful and vibrant and it looks like the illustrator used paint to create the images. The paintings are very large and mostly take up both sides of the pages.

I thought this was a really cute book to use with younger children. Young children still have a very strong dependancy on their parents and so they may be able to connect with this book. In the pictures i noticed that the mother and father were both blonde, caucasians but the child had dark hair and dark skin. I liked the way that Molly Bang incorporated this into her book because many children are adopted these days and they can relate to the story. This story says that even though you may be adopted you can still be loved just the same as biological children. The illustrations in this book were my favorite part of the story. The images were full of intricate detail and color and really caught your eye. My favorite page was the page where the mom is sitting on a cloud under a beautiful rainbow. The text reads" I feel you lying here all snug inside me. Smiling your smile and asking hows the waether out there? And I smile back and say "It's jsut fine. It's beautiful."

I think that this would be a good book to use in the classroom when talking about families. You could point out that the child is obviously not their biological child and that it is ok to be a part of another family. Also you could show that love in universal, no matter what your skin color, hair color, size, or shape is you can still be loved.