Would You Still Love Me if I Was a Worm?

One kid wants to know: Are there limits to a parent’s love?
A child with pale skin, stubby orange pigtails, and outsize pink glasses addresses a question to a pale-skinned parent: “Would you still love me… / …if I was a worm? / I’d live in the mud— / just look at me squirm!” Replies the parent: “Of course I’d still love you— / worm hugs are bliss. / I’d wipe off the mud / and then give you a kiss.” On it goes: The kid issues a challenge that tests the parent’s love (“If I was a troll,” “If I was a ghost,” etc.), and the parent responds with full-throated rhymed reassurance (“Yes! / If you were a ghost, / I’d still love you the most”). This hymn to unconditional love, which can’t help recalling Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s like-themed The Runaway Bunny, is made all the more affecting by Copper’s color-blasted illustrations: They present the child’s fantasized incarnation as one creature or another (dirt-smeared pink worm, moldy cheese, and so on) while retaining those adorable pigtails and wacky glasses. Despite the threat of a foray into scatology (“Would you still love me if / I was green goop? / A potty, a piggy, / or even some…”), this book’s foundational sweetness prevails. A reassuring charmer that’s funny and just the right amount of gross. (Picture book. 3-7)—Kirkus Reviews

PreS-Gr 2–A parent reassures a child of her unending love in this sweet but not saccharine picture book. A girl-cued child with spiky orange pigtails and giant round glasses proposes a series of rhyming gross-out scenarios to her mom, asking “Would you still love me if I was...” and naming increasingly unseemly things including a worm, a troll, green goop and everything in between. Her mom responds in rhyme, finally drawing the line before the poetic progression inevitably leads to “poop.” She then reminds her child that the answer to her questions will always be yes, since her child is “just perfect because you are mine.” The rhymes are clean and clever and feature imaginative scenarios, such as tucking in a blue cheese–child to bed with a cracker and a pickle. Only a few rhymes miss the mark slightly. The illustrations are exaggerated and whimsical, the child’s own distinctive features melding seamlessly into each new imagined transformation. VERDICT While some books about a parent’s undying affection seem written for an adult audience, this ode to parental love works well as a fun and silly read-aloud, especially for kids who giggle over gross-out humor.—School Library Journal