LoveYouForeverLove You Forever, by Robert Munsch, Illustrated by Sheila McGraw • Firefly Books 2009 (75th printing, first published 1986).

I’m just going to come right out and say it: I hate this book. I hate everything about it, from the smirking, toilet-trashing toddler on the cover (who, a larger illustration two pages in to the story seems to indicate, has just drowned the family cat), to the stalker mother who climbs into her adult son’s bedroom window to sing him a freaking lullaby. Maybe I just don’t understand what it’s like to be a mother, maybe I’m a heartless old spinster, but, DANG. That’sjust weird. And I’ve read Oedipus. I know from weird.

But, obviously, I’m in the minority here. A cursory Googling reveals that people love this book. So I guess it’s time I made my peace with it.

The story is quite simple. A young mother with a new baby sings a simple lullaby: “I’ll love you forever/I’ll like you for always,/As long as I’m living,/my baby you’ll be.” The baby grows up, as babies do, and does the things that kids do, from making messes and flushing watches, to becoming a surly teenager and refusing to bathe. But his mother still loves him. And she still sings him that song, on every other page, in a sort of hypnotic refrain.

Eventually, the baby moves out, and his mother still loves him. The aforementioned creepy stalky lullaby scene happens. Then the mother gets really old, and tells her son (who only lives across town, mind you), that “You’d better come and see me because I’m very old and sick.” So he drags himself across town, picks her up, rocks her back and forth and sings, “I’ll love you forever,/I’ll like you for always,/ As long as I’m living/my Mommy you’ll be.” And then he goes home, and he stands, “for a long time at the top of the stairs,” goes in to his infant daughter’s room, and the we-have-no-boundaries-lullaby cycle begins anew.

And I’ll admit it. That sunrise/sunset bit at the end does bring the merest hint of a tear to my eyes. But it’s not a good tear. It’s a “You got me, you bastards” kind of tear.

So: Who is this book for? People who feel the mother in Runaway Bunny shows a disturbing lack of engagement in her son’s life. Parents looking for something to read aloud to the babies they can’t believe they love so much. Folks who have no inner cynic and are looking for a good cry.

It seems like Love You Forever, already in its 75th printing, is the kind of book that self-selects. If you like it, you LOVE it. And the rest of us just try to pretend it isn’t there.

I’d like to dedicate this post to my mother.