Wishes for You

My super handed me WISHES FOR YOU as I was going to the subway. While reading it on the subway, I did not start weeping until: "I hope you will love one special person more than anyone or anything in the whole world," and then I did not stop weeping until long after I finished the book and got off the train at Queensboro Plaza. The not-starting weeping until that late in the book was a commendable sign of self-restraint, I think, considering how moving, authentic, and wonderful WISHES FOR YOU is.

A lovely and inspiring children's book with gorgeous illustrations that all children will love. I bought two more for the children in my family. Highly recommended!

Ideal picture books for very young children--as difficult to compose as lyric poems--appeal to three kinds of readers: the very young child to whom it is introduced, the adult who usually repeats that introduction many times (including at moments of high anxiety or exhaustion), and the child several years later, who is capable of re-reading the book independently. Picture books that appeal to a fourth kind of reader--the grown-up child who looks back to his or her infant library for books to read to a new generation--are what we mean by "classics." In this last sense, "Wishes for You," freshly published, is a classic waiting to happen. It is written with a purity and dignity of expression that both children and adults (grandparents included) will grasp right away and illustrated with a gentle figuration that is captivating and, sometimes, heartbreaking. This book of "I-wish-for-you"s offers immediate affection to youngsters as well as a plangent element of memory to older ones: it works on the level of "Now!" and of then. Also, the nature of wishing, itself, is presented, quite unusually, as an aspect of human development, rather than, more conventionally, as a pendant to human vanity. Although all the lovely spreads are instantly available to every stage of emotional maturation in reading, no pairing of words and picture is emotionally predictable. Even on many re-readings, the book has wisdom to spare. A treasure.

Tobi Tobias has written a little gem, a picture book that is poetic but utterly straightforward. WISHES FOR YOU consists of a series of wishes for the future of a much loved young child.("I hope you will love to read. . . I hope you will love being alone sometimes.") Danish artist Henry Sorensen's accompanying illustrations feature lush colors and realistic renderings of approachable-looking children being wistful, playful or intent on a task. This book would make an excellent gift for a child under five.

Tobi Tobias, mother of two and grandmother of four, has been writing gentle, reassuring books for children for many years that stress the values that make families work and children feel secure. With Wishes for You, she succinctly and poetically creates a road map for the life of a child, wishing her or him--this book is for children, not boys or girls--the happiness of being alive, of loving one special person, of feeling your body move--understandable since Tobias is a prominent dance critic-- of being creative. Each wish stresses individualism in universal terms, the most compelling of which are"I hope you will know what you think and feel and not let other people tell you" and "I hope you will love being alone sometimes." These and the rest of the wishes in this book are ones I had for my own daughter at the time of her birth 27 years ago. Danish artist Henri Sorensen's illustrations are more than that: each painting particularizes a general wish: "I hope you will love to read" shows an Asian child with a book, a stuffed hippo, a live cat, a globe;"I hope you will never forget how to be silly" is illustrated with seven blond blue-eyed kids pretty clearly giggling as they pull one of their number in a cart. I like the multicultural approach taken by both the author and the illustrator and hope Wishes for You is read to and by many many children.