Guess How Much I Love You?: Library Notes

Written by Sam McBratney and illustrated by Anita Jeram, the classic story of "I love you to the moon and back", is a playful interaction between big nutbrown hare and baby to guess how much they love each other.  Can we guess that?  It is fun to guess such a wonderful thing!  

What is so great is that this book is all positives and affirmations. It creates an opportunity for parents to also share their love for their children.  

Using this book

Little nutbrown hare held big nutbrown hare's ears to make sure he could hear..  That was a wise first step.  If you have an important message to share, get their attention and make sure the other person can hear you first.

Displaying his love by stretching out his arms as wide as they could go and as high as he could reach, loving all the way up to his toes (upside down), as high as he could hop, down the lane as far as the river/across the river and over the hills, and right up to the moon (and back).... wow, that is a lot of love actively demonstrated between them.

Since this book is a bedtime story that has a reference to loving to the moon and back, it makes sense to also mention another moon in another book, Good Night Moon  This story also has a rabbit as the main character.  The little bunny is taking his time to say goodnight to the things in his room and to the moon.  It is a book that rhymes with multiple references to other rhymes such as Hey diddle diddle and The kittens who lost their mittens.  It also references the stories of The Three Bears and The Runaway Bunny (by the same author). 

This book is useful for a child practicing telling time as the story is written in ten minute time increments from 7:00 to 8:10pm.  The position of the moon also changes throughout the book.  It is also useful for early vocabulary building as you can also name items in your room to say good night to them.

Good Night Moon makes me think of  Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann  The gorilla at the zoo manages to obtain the keys to the cages and one by one lets them out as they follow the oblivious zoo keeper back to his home where they all settle in for a good night's sleep, that is, until their 'good nights!" get the attention of the zookeeper's wife.   

This is just an example of how one book can be connected to others.  This is referred to as text to text connection and is something children are expected to do in school.  The first /G/ book connects to guessing being a good thing and connects the text to self via the parent to child relationship.  The second connects to saying goodnight to the moon as part of the bedtime routine and connects the child to their environment/the world. The third is a more playful approach to a goodnight story connecting the child to their imagination. These books will build their descriptive and vocabulary skills and spark interesting discussions that are bonding.  Knowing how to make text to self, text to text and text to world applications is a valuable literacy skill evidenced here.  Above all, the value comes in time spent together reading.  Making reading a part of the bedtime routine using books such as these is a helpful and time honoured tradition that should be considered by us all.