Guess How Much I Love You

I just love Sam McBratney’s children’s books. Anita Jeram’s gentle illustrations, coupled with McBratney’s loving storytelling and sweet relationships, combine to create the perfect bedtime story—or anytime story—that children are sure to love.

Guess How Much I Love You takes the familiar ritual of asking the same question (and the spreading out of the arms to indicate how much) and bunnifies it, creating a sweet personified story of love and warmth between father and child.

Wanting to be certain that his father is listening, Little Nutbrown Hare gets on his father’s back, holds onto his ears, and says, “Guess how much I love you?” What follows is declaration after declaration of love between father and son in which each one shows “how much I love you” through various means—physical demonstrations, such as stretching their arms wide, then high; standing upside down and hopping; then verbal descriptions, such as across the river or up to the moon.

Each demonstration proves that Big Nutbrown Hare can do more than Little Nutbrown Hare—naturally, of course, as he’s an adult—which only excites Little Nutbrown Hare into trying to go a step further. Their day proceeds just like that of any child and father who keep saying, “I love you more!” As they near the end of their declarations, Little Nutbrown Hare gets tired, and his father whispers to his sleeping bunny, “I love you right up to the moon—and back.”

 You have to admit that repeating “Big Nutbrown Hare” and “Little Nutbrown Hare” can become a mouthful, but the repetition is also quite soothing once you get into the story. As the father and son skirt around a tree, leap up into the air, stand upside down and play until nightfall, their love for one another is apparent in both McBratney’s text as well as Jeram’s artwork. The gradual descent of the day into night, coupled with the bunny’s rubbing of his eyes and cuddling with his father, ease them both—as well as the reader—into a warm state of nighttime readiness.

Guess How Much I Love You, along with any of McBratney’s other books, would make a great gift for any child or expectant parent. Though some might say that it’s about a “competition” between father and son, its true message about endless, infinite love—that, no matter how either try to express, is far more than conveyed through words or actions—will delight both young readers as well as their parents.