MAMA HUG

is my new book and you can preorder it now!

I love all kinds of picture books. I love hilarious picture books, I love funny picture books, I love wild and weird picture books. I also, much to own surprise as a parent, love books about trucks, and garbage trucks, and excavator trucks, all kinds of things that I had literally never cared about in my life before my very small children expressed a deep, deep desire to hear about them endlessly. Another kind of book I’d never thought about before having babies was the book that gets read at least four times a day in those heady early multi-nap days and weeks and months. The books that needed to be short and sweet, emphasis on both short (please lord, no paragraphs, I am just trying to get this child to go to sleep) and sweet (I have never loved anything as much as I love this child, I love this child more than I could ever love anything else in the entire world, but also I want this child to pass out quickly so I can pee by myself).

My first two picture books were funny—Very Good Hats, which was illustrated by the phenomenal and witty Blanca Gomez, and Gaga Mistake Day, written with my mother, which was illustrated by the charming and aptly named Jessica Love. My new book, Mama Hug, which comes out in one month, is a different kind of picture book. It is the short and sweet book of a new parent’s dreams. It is meant to be read with a tiny baby on your lap, or maybe on your boob, if you’ve got one of those, or maybe sucking on a bottle, if you’ve got one of those. Mama Hug is a love letter to my first baby, a baby who is now eleven years old. He was always cuddly, and is still cuddly, though now he’s old enough that the thought of me telling the world that he is cuddly is almost enough to embarrass him. But not quite. He still begins and ends the day wanting to be close, and says so. No matter how tired I am, those cuddles are still one of the very best parts of my day. Stevie Lewis did the illustrations, and made a world that feels like the very best parts of having a new baby—skin contact and sunlight, touch and kisses and comfort. I love it so much. I don’t like to be prescriptive with books—I truly do believe that you can read anything anywhere, and that each person, which includes each child, has their own universe of likes and dislikes and rights and wrongs. But. I will say. This is a very good book to read cuddled up with a new person you love. I can practically feel my son’s tiny hand on my wrist.

If you have a person with a tiny hand sitting on your lap, lucky you.

Click here to preorder Mama Hug.

The Watermelon Seed is an all-time classic too, as you can see.