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A review by thewildnorry
I'll Be Right There by Jonathan Marshall
5.0
I am not the targeted demographic of this book.
I am over the age of 10, I have no kids, and frankly I prefer dystopians.
That said, I loved this book.
I picked it up because I am teaching my students how to write children's books of their own that share important messages they were never taught or messages that aren't frequently found in kid's books. While the message of absolute love and protection is one found with children's books, it never gets old.
What this book particularly does well with those themes is applying them to a specific situation (being afraid at night) and being realistic about what a child's facing. At no point does the author say that all of the bad dreams will go away, that they'll stop happening, that the parent can fix what's wrong. All the father can promise is that he'll be right there to weather it with his child. This is so beautiful to me because the message transcends the specific context of this book and I can see kids remembering this in the back of their mind when they have their first break up, when they have to face death, when things go wrong.
As a quick side note: this book reminded me of a more heartfelt "Green Eggs and Ham" in the best way mainly in how the book traveled around to show all of the places a father would come running from.
Additionally, I *LOVED* the illustration. It reminded me of some old Nickelodeon cartoons (back when Face was still on TV) and had a very cool feeling of looking at the art I used to make as a kid where I would take different color paper, cut them, and glue them on top of one another to make a new image. But rather than simply sticking to illustrating the story in the traditional "make pictures" sense, the illustrator also made sure to incorporate the text as a design element and part of the picture rather than a separate part of that's the story and these are the pictures. Everything worked together beautifully, and it's such a lovely book to have.
I am over the age of 10, I have no kids, and frankly I prefer dystopians.
That said, I loved this book.
I picked it up because I am teaching my students how to write children's books of their own that share important messages they were never taught or messages that aren't frequently found in kid's books. While the message of absolute love and protection is one found with children's books, it never gets old.
What this book particularly does well with those themes is applying them to a specific situation (being afraid at night) and being realistic about what a child's facing. At no point does the author say that all of the bad dreams will go away, that they'll stop happening, that the parent can fix what's wrong. All the father can promise is that he'll be right there to weather it with his child. This is so beautiful to me because the message transcends the specific context of this book and I can see kids remembering this in the back of their mind when they have their first break up, when they have to face death, when things go wrong.
As a quick side note: this book reminded me of a more heartfelt "Green Eggs and Ham" in the best way mainly in how the book traveled around to show all of the places a father would come running from.
Additionally, I *LOVED* the illustration. It reminded me of some old Nickelodeon cartoons (back when Face was still on TV) and had a very cool feeling of looking at the art I used to make as a kid where I would take different color paper, cut them, and glue them on top of one another to make a new image. But rather than simply sticking to illustrating the story in the traditional "make pictures" sense, the illustrator also made sure to incorporate the text as a design element and part of the picture rather than a separate part of that's the story and these are the pictures. Everything worked together beautifully, and it's such a lovely book to have.