Books like Consider Love: Its Moods and Many Ways
By Sandra Boynton
For families who like a book to slow things down and make a fuss over love without getting mushy about it, this one hands parent and child a shared reason to grin at each other. Warm, playful, gently silly, and quietly tender.
A great-grandson wanders through his grandfather's topiary garden, where hedges shaped like a farmboy, a soldier, and a chickenpox-covered kid retell a whole lifetime one memory at a time.
When every girl at the Paris boarding school falls sick on Christmas Eve, the smallest and bravest one stays well enough to take charge — and finds unexpected help from a magical rug-selling merchant.
A gentle tour through nature at dusk, as mother animals — owl, fox, whale, and more — each tell their babies just how deep and boundless their love runs.
A kind, beautiful maid comes to live in a mysterious castle with a Beast, where animals in period dress attend them both — and her capacity to love may be the only thing that can break his spell.
A witch famous throughout Russia for eating children is secretly a lonely old woman who longs for a grandchild, so she disguises herself as a village babushka to find one.
A tiny snail longing to see the world hitches a ride on a humpback whale's tail, and together they sail to icebergs and volcanoes — until the whale gets stranded and needs the smallest friend to save her.
A dapper frog rides off on horseback to woo a coy little mouse, and their courtship unfolds through verse after verse of the old folk song, right up to their wedding day.
A poor washerwoman on the island of Martinique uses her mother's magic wand to help her beloved goddaughter Cendrillon win the heart of a rich man's son.
A small boy is invited to tea at the palace and always asks the same question — may he bring a friend? — and each time, a surprising animal guest shows up beautifully behaved.
A gallery of towering, spike-tailed dinosaurs test their families' patience with messes and roaring fits, then show love in small ways — cleaning up, smiling instead of shouting, and hugging tight.
Imprisoned with her family at a WWII incarceration camp, a young woman finds a small library and, in it, a quiet friendship with a man who checks out an armful of books every single day.
A girl named Treva notices her family's Christmas decorations and presents mysteriously vanishing, and when she tracks down the culprit, she finds two trolls who have never had a Christmas of their own.
