How Love is Made

Stuart French (text) and Anastasia Bukhnina (illustrator), How Love is Made, Ethicool Books, June 2022, 36 pp., RRP $22.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780648872351

How Love is Made is a poetic reflection on the nature of a parent’s love for their child. Stuart French talks, in the dedication, about how he wrote the text late one night exploring the way loving our children leaves us feeling the deepest of emotions. This is a book that feels like a sentimental gift for a parent or grandparent to give their special young one.

The poem takes the reader through the immensity of experiencing love, and the small moments that also mean love, and reminds the young reader that they are deeply loved. The rich, washed colours of Anastastia Bukhnina’s illustrations fill the page with a beautiful intensity, offset by the spiky sweetness of the adult and child hedgehog exploring land and sea and stars in search of love and safe harbour.

The language of the poem is adult, rather than being pitched at a young audience, but would be well-suited to reading to a young 2-4 year old cuddled up on a lap, for the warmth of the moment. It would sit well alongside such books as Love You Forever by Robert Munsch, and I’m sure the sentiments of How Love is Made will resonate with many parents and grandparents.

Reviewed by Emily Clarke

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