Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
A Mother's Wish
Illustrator: Irena Roman
Picture Book
For ages 5 to 7
Sleeping Bear Press, 2006 ISBN: 0060571713
Ella and her mother are picking flowers one day when they see a butterfly flying among the blooms. Ella’s mother tells her daughter how you can tell a butterfly your greatest wish and the butterfly will carry the wish up to the stars so that it can come true. Ella and her mother have such a special and wonderful day that Ella cannot help hoping that the happy feeling in her heart will last as long as possible. Ella seeks reassurance when she asks her mother if her mother will “be my mother forever” and the next morning Ella goes out and gives a butterfly her wish; that her mother “never, ever goes away.”
It is only when she is getting ready to leave home that Ella discovers that she is not the only one who made a wish on a butterfly. Her mother also made a wish and it looks as if both their special wishes have come true.
Both mothers and their children will find this heartwarming book both delightful to look at and to read. Its message of love, reassurance, and hope for the future is comforting, and it reminds readers that the relationship between a mother and her child is truly unlike any other. Rich and beautifully detailed illustrations capture the magic of the garden with its myriad of flowers and butterflies and also the love that the mother and her daughter have for one another.
