cover image I've Loved You Since Forever

I've Loved You Since Forever

Hoda Kotb, illus. by Suzie Mason. HarperCollins, $18.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-06-284174-2

Today show co-host Kotb offers a sweet, uncomplicated expression of love for a newborn child, inspired by her adoption of a baby girl in 2017. In lullaby-like verse, Kotb suggests that a mother's love doesn't begin when she meets her child for the first time, but that it has always been there, waiting for that child's arrival: "I've loved you since forever. Before birds flew over rainbows and monkeys swung on trees, there was you... and there was me." Mason shows mother and baby animals in her bright, digitally rendered pictures, including two rabbits in a den, owls in their nest, elephants in a grassy savanna, and deer in a meadowland. A final spread depicts a silhouetted mother and child figure standing against a starry sky: "there was you and there was me, waiting for the day our stars would cross and you and I turned into we." A bighearted celebration of new motherhood that may especially appeal to families with adopted children. Ages 4%E2%80%938. (Mar.)