Guess How Much I Love You

Little Nutbrown Hare loves Big Nutbrown Hare as far as he can reach and as high as he can hop. But Big Nutbrown Hare loves him as far as his long arms can reach and as high as his strong legs can hop. Well then, Little Nutbrown Hare loves Big Nutbrown Hare right up to the moon! That is very far, but it's just halfway to Big Nutbrown Hare's love for Little Nutbrown Hare. With endearing watercolors by Anita Jeram that capture a deep and tender bond between the characters, Sam McBratney's touching bedtime story seeks to measure the immeasurable: the love between a parent and a child.

Little Nutbrown Hare wants very much to impress Big Nutbrown Hare with the enormous scale of his devotion, but ends up being the one who's impressed. Subtitled "a pop-up edition," this sturdy square edition of Sam McBratney's ever-popular Guess How Much I Love You is probably better described as a "slide-along edition." Some pages do include pop-ups, but they aren't the best ones; instead, most involve pull-tabs which animate the two rabbits and their surroundings. One of the most appealing scenes simply shows Little Nutbrown Hare hopping up and down. In a purely technical sense this exercise in interactive cardboard technology is well behind some of the competition, but the tale has a timeless charm and the very simplicity of the movements makes it easy for small fingers to waggle the tabs and take control of the story. (Ages 2 to 4) --Richard Farr