Guess How Much I Love You - Sam McBratney > Reviews (15)

Guess how much I love you is one of the books that I came across whilst working as a nursery nurse before I had my son and I just knew that it would be one that I had to buy for him when he arrived. In fact I think he ended up with it in miniature form, normal sized and a huge book as well-though they weren’t all bought by me!

The book guess how much I love you was first published in 1994 and is written by Sam Mc Bratney and illustrated by Anita Jeram. My version that I am reviewing today is a paper back but the front cover does feel very tough and has with stood being ready many times over the years and still looks in perfect condition. The front cover shows pictures of a little brown hare and a bit brown hare in the middle and it has the words guess how much I love you too. The edges of the front cover are different pastel colours and make the book look really nice and neutral, yet appealing.

The book tells the story of little nutbrown hare and big nutbrown hare as they discuss their love for each other as parent and child I think. Little nutbrown hare begins by saying “Guess how much I love you?” and big nutbrown hare saying he can’t possibly guess. Little nutbrown hare proceeds to stretch his arms as far as he can and says “I love you this much” but of course big nutbrown hare can stretch his arms even further and so can say he loves little nutbrown hare even more. This theme goes on in different forms before finally just before drifting off to sleep little nutbrown hare thinks hard and says “I love you to the moon” which is obviously a lot! Big nutbrown hare allows him to fall asleep before saying “I love you to the moon-and back.”

Even typing this review makes me smile as I am thinking of the story and I have to say I absolutely adore this book. I think is it so sweet and I think it is something that any parent can relate to when they think of their children. I have read this book often with my son and he will stretch out his arms or jump as high as he can and say “I love you this much” in a way of imitating the book in showing love. When I am tucking him in at night so often he will say “I love you to the moon and back” and it really does melt your heart! I have no issues in showing my son how much I love him and vice versa but I feel that this is a perfect book to share with your child at bedtime as I do think it helps to generate a feeling of closeness!

The illustrations in the book are just lovely too despite the fact that we are mainly just seeing pictures of the two hares in fields and things. The illustrator does an excellent job of portraying the closeness of the hares with the pictures and as such make them so inviting and nice to look at.

The book is an average length for a children’s book with 32 pages but what is nice is the text is quite a large font and so it makes it easier for young readers to have a go at reading the book independently which is something my son likes to do.

I am sure that you can already tell that I give this book my full recommendation as I can honestly not find a single fault with it at all and I feel it is certainly one of the best children’s books out there. You can pick up this book from amazon for £2.69 which is a bargain price and I would thoroughly recommend that you do buy it if you have children!

Thank you for reading my review!