You Are My Home
Images of young creatures being loved and supported fill the therapeutic picture book You Are My Home.
A therapeutic tool for facilitating open communication between young children and their parents, Julia Swaigen’s lovely picture book You Are My Home pairs poetic mantras and soothing images with advice for nurturing one’s children.
Though packaged as a story collection, this text gathers brief verses that flow together to model family love in broad terms. Its illustrations feature animals as stand-ins for humans, with otters proving most focal. Its images of parent and child otters connecting alongside other creatures are set against soft watercolor backdrops, with green grass, idyllic cascades of flowers, running rivers, and bits of color sometimes spilling onto the adjoining pages of text, too.
There are some issues with scale and precision in the illustrations, which are rather idealized and seem to blur disparate ecosystems together. The young creatures they feature are given voice in the spare verses that run alongside them, which emphasize the young ones’ feelings of being loved and supported: “I feel you. I feel your warmth, breath, heartbeat. Being close to you is just what I need. I love you. I love to be with you. You are my home.”
The book’s divisions prove somewhat superfluous, though, as each story emphasizes the same themes of parent-child togetherness, interdependence, and support. Phrases including “I love you” and “you are my home” repeat across the sections without meaningful variation. Characterizations of the animals are eschewed in favor of general depictions of healthy interactions. These generalities are somewhat flattening, and there is no true narrative arc in any individual tale. Still, if the book is approached as an encouraging channel for warm time spent together, it is comforting and engaging.
Following the mantras comes a brief guide for parents, though it, too, is short on specificity. It assures parents that “perfection has no place in parenting and there are many different ways to be a great parent,” telling them to do their best; its guidance rests more in the realm of platitudes than helpful direction. It discusses childhood mirroring of parents’ behaviors, toddlers’ defiance, and fostering individuality by “showing delight in” one’s children, but its coverage of early childhood stages is quite cursory. A late explanation of why otters were chosen as the representative species also takes the book afield of its family support focus with its mentions of ecological concerns.
You Are My Home is a sweet, though somewhat generic, illustrated relationship guidebook that looks for examples of supportive early childhood bonding in nature.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
