Love You Head to Toe is the first children's book that Ashley Barron, an award-winning cut-paper collage artist, has written as well as illustrated. She lives in Toronto, and her enjoyment of the city's freedom from any dominant culture or nationality shows in her choices of babies of many ethnicities as they splash, toddle, munch, and scoot through their days.
"Baby, you're a sea star," the book begins, and a four-line rhyme matches the adorable illustration of a baby in a zip-up onesie stretching his arms and legs in starfish fashion, a stuffed dolphin beside him. As we proceed through the day chronologically, we meet up with a baby playing with a mobile's dangling toys, like a kitten reaching for a butterfly; one who's splashing on the narrating mother's back, like a duckling; another tumbling into a sister's arms, like a "big bear hug heap," and so forth.
This book is meant for babies and young children, especially those with baby sibs. Any one of the pictures, though, could be a meditation for a grown-up on cherishing the baby or babies in their lives "from head to toe."
