You're All My Favorites

Just in time for the tenth anniversary -- the creators of Guess How Much I Love You reunite!

So that night the three baby bears asked their Daddy Bear,
Which one of us do you like the most?
Who is your favorite?
We can't all be the best.

Every night, while tucking in their three cubs, Mommy and Daddy Bear tell them they're the most wonderful baby bears in the whole wide world. But one day the three little bears start to wonder: How do Mommy and Daddy know this is true? And even more worrisome to each sibling: What if my parents like my brother or sister better than me? From the team who brought us the beloved Big and Little Nutbrown Hare comes a tale that answers a timeless question with the ultimate reassurance -- and offers the perfect way for parents to remind their own little cubs how very much each one is loved.

Mommy and Daddy Bear convince three worried cubs that there's plenty of love to go around in this comforting new tale from the incomparable team of Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram.

Publishers Weekly

Jeram brings her gifts in ursine portraiture (evidenced in Kiss Goodnight) to bear on a sweet, if rather neatly resolved text by McBratney, her collaborator in Guess How Much I Love You. A mother and father bear face an age-old dilemma: how can they prove there's enough parental love for all three of their cubs? Mommy and Daddy may insist they have the most wonderful baby bears in the whole wide world, but the baby bears reason, We can't all be the best. Jeram shows each cub anxiously pondering a possible shortcoming: the eldest has no patches (Maybe his mommy really really liked patches), the middle one is the only girl, and the littlest is... well, small. But Daddy persuades his cubs that those qualities do not matter. He recalls that when the bears were born, Mommy Bear declared each one the most perfect example of a first, second and third baby bear, respectively. While this answer mollifies the cubs (they fall asleep on their mother's capacious tummy), readers may find a reassurance tied to the siblings' birth order to be more unsettling than comforting. Jeram's pictures are so beguiling, however, that she smoothes over this considerable rough spot. By sketching in only the barest suggestions of setting, she allows the bears to speak far more eloquently through their postures, expressions and cuddles. Ages 3-7. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.