Guess How Much I Love You

Rating

I love you more! No, I love you more!

This has the same text as the board book version. The board book version is missing a couple of pictures. Most of the pictures it is missing are reaction shots of Big Nutbrown Hare, although it's also missing a really sweet picture of Big Nutbrown Hare cradling Little Nutbrown Hare as they look up at the moon near the end.

Basically, the story is: Big Nutbrown Hare is putting Little Nutbrown Hare to sleep. I've read this book to my child many times. It gets really annoying to say the full names of Big Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare every single time. It would have been nice if one of them were female if only so the author could have used pronouns to make the reading easier. Or just shorter names. Sometimes I just call them "Big" and "Little." It's kind of nice in that it's the story of a male authority figure performing the typically "motherly" task of putting a child to sleep. And this is very easily relatable, with nothing explicitly saying that Big is Little's father, or grandfather, or uncle, or anything specific. But because it's so generic, there's not much to it.

Basically, the kid keeps telling the adult, "I love you this much," and the adult keeps responding, "Well, I love you this much," and it's always more. Some people are irked by the adult seeming to feel the need to top the child, but I feel like it's a common thing for people (for example, young couples in love do this all the time) to mock-argue that they love each other more. It's just a back and forth thing. They're just trying to come up with ways of expressing their love. Nobody is saying the other's love is truly limited. They're playing, and it's putting a little boy to bed.

It's cute, but it's not interesting for an adult. I don't know if my kid really likes it, or if it's just a book that he can hold. He brings it to me every once in a while. It's cute, but kind of boring, and kind of repetitive.

Message

Families love each other.

Authors
Illustrators
Publication Year
1988
Age Range
2-3
Number of Pages
28
Number of words on a typical page
26