Happy 4th of July! My family just finished walking in our local parade and it was fun to wave at everyone and wish people a happy 4th of July. We are such a rich, diverse country and this is a great time to celebrate that fact. So given that today is the day that we celebrate America, I give you the really wonderful book I Love You Americanly, by Lynn Parrish Sutton and illustrated by Melanie Hope Greenberg.
I Love You Americanly is a tribute to the United States as well as a love story between parent and child. As Lynn Parrish Sutton explains, “It is a declaration of love for family and country that includes America’s geographical wonders, cities and monuments, as well as its founding ideals and quintessential experiences.”
The book works as a bedtime story where each line begins “I love you…” and is followed by wonderful adverbs and descriptions of locations across the US. Everyone is sure to find some favorites and kids can even use this as a way to remember places they’ve been! How cool would it be to travel with this book and use a Sharpie to write on a page when you actually visited a certain landmark and a memory to accompany it?
The books also contain a gentle rhyme on each page to allow it to feel somewhat singsongy which children enjoy. In order to make some of the rhymes work, there are a few landmarks juxtaposed that make me laugh such as the Blue Ridge Mountains with the Bellagio’s fountains. But the book really covers you from coast to coast, or from the Pacific Coast Highway to the Outer Bank’s flyway.
One of the neat things that goes along with the book is that the people at Kane Miller have put together some resources for parents and teachers to go along with the book. My favorite of the resources is a glossary, in order of appearance, of each landmark. There are even some coloring pages to get kids in on the action.
I Love You Americanly is distributed by Usborne Books & More and I am an Independent Consultant. If this or any other Usborne or Kane Miller book interests you, please let me know, I would love to help you add to your library.
Happy Independence Day!