I Promise I'll Find You
It will be up to presiding adults to create an appropriate context for this underbaked book, which is dedicated in part to "all of the missing children in the world." In verse, a mother tells her child about the ways she might search for him: "If I had a little racecar/ I'd race the whole world twice./ I'd find you and I'd keep you,/ Oh, that would be so nice." Where Margaret Wise Brown's The Runaway Bunny reassuringly tells a child that a parent's love will follow him wherever he goes, Ward changes the script: I will find you wherever you are taken. In doing so she seems to introduce the anxiety her book seeks to dispel. McGraw (who illustrated Love You Forever) serves up a set of bouncy full-spread pastels splashed with sunlight. Readers may enjoy hunting through the art for the stray child, found on every spread except one-an inconsistency that is particularly disturbing in light of the book's themes. Ages 3-8.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.