What to Read to Your Kids

In my opinion, Valentine’s Day greatly improved as a holiday when I started thinking of it as a chance to gift myself and my loves ones a new book (or three). Any great book will do, of course, but I do love something that approaches the idea of love in a clever, non-traditional way. Past favorites have included Viking in Love, All the Beating Hearts, and Brimsby’s Hats. (If you’re following me on Instagram, you’ll be getting a new recommendation every day between now and the 14^th). But I think today’s picture book takes the (heart-shaped) cake for Most Unlikely Book to Gift for Valentine’s Day.

Pepper & Me is a story about a scab. You heard me. Well, more accurately, it’s a story about a girl who gets a scab from falling down—and then goes on to name that scab, talk to that scab, and befriend that scab. Is that weird? Yup, it’s super-duper weird. Does it also feel authentic, like could I picture my own children doing something like this when they were younger? Absolutely. (I mean, my son did warm to a restaurant straw wrapper that he kept on his bedside table for months.) Is it all kinds of delightful because the story is written and illustrated by the magnificent Italian storyteller, Beatrice Alemagna, the talent behind one of my forever favorites, On a Magical Do-Nothing Day? You better believe it.

All those points aside, what could Pepper & Me possibly have to do with Valentine’s Day? Well, here’s the thing. Initially, our protagonist is repulsed by this scab on her knee. “Hideous scab,” she calls it. She feels marred by its presence and fearful of its persistence. And yet, as the days go on, she turns her curiosity on the bloody aberration and, in doing so, begins to accept, even embrace, it as part of herself. Ultimately, what makes this story one of love is the way it showcases the girl’s emotional journey from resistance to re-framing. It may be the quirkiest expression of self-love to grace the pages of a picture book, but it’s a marvelous way to introduce the idea of what might happen if we learn to love all our parts, even the ugly ones.