What Is Love? by Mac Barnett

Abstract

Reviewed by: What Is Love? by Mac Barnett Deborah Stevenson Barnett, Mac What Is Love?; illus. by Carson Ellis. Chronicle, 2021 [44p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781452176406 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781452176642 $11.99 Reviewed from digital galleys Ad 5-7 yrs “What is love?” asks our young narrator of his grandmother, who sends him out into the world to seek the answer. It’s a puzzling process: the fisherman says love is [End Page 46] a fish, the actor says love is applause, the cat says love is the night, the soldier says love is a blade, and so on. After years go by, the now grown man returns home with joy and greets his grandmother with an embrace, clearly the answer to his question. There are some pleasingly humorous touches along the way (to the fisherman, the narrator says, “But I don’t like fish . . . They’re slimy and taste bad. And they have creepy eyes”), but ultimately the parable is tough to parse, since the examples the boy encounters along the way don’t really map onto his ultimate discovery. Ellis’ gouache art is familiarly spare yet gemütlich, picking up the text’s folkloric mood as the boy travels. Kids may need a little prompting to understand the conclusion, but it could lead to some interesting discussions about how we all define love. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois