Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
A Kiss for You
Illustrator: Susanne Latje
Board Book
For ages 2 to 4
NorthSouth, 2014 ISBN: 978-0735841598
Kissing the people that we care about is a wonderful way to show them that they are loved. It is so easy to do too, but what if we want to kiss a giraffe, or a sloth, or a little sparrow? How does one go about kissing these animals?
Thankfully, the little child who appears in this book knows just what to do when she is presented with a challenging kissing situation. If she wants to kiss a giraffe she climbs “his neck like a mountaineer” so that she can give him a kiss on his big soft ear.
Kissing a sloth also requires that she has to climb something. Up a tree she goes and down a branch. Then, and this is not an exaggeration, she hangs upside down to give a sloth a smooch on its nose. She doesn’t want the animal to have to “move a muscle.”
One would think that kissing a rhino would be challenging, but for this child it is easy. She pretends that he is a unicorn and kisses him “on his horn.”
Many of us take kisses for granted. This book reminds us that kisses are precious, and it celebrates the way in which kisses bring people, and animals, together.