Your Heart Can Hold the Whole Universe by Rebecca Atanossova is a lovingly crafted children’s book that leads with love and encourages your child to do the same. Reviewed by Toni Woodruff. The post Book Review: Your Heart Can Hold...
Your Heart Can Hold the Whole Universe
by Rebecca Atanassova
Genre: Children’s Picture Book
ISBN: 9781960746238
Print Length: 40 pages
Reviewed by Toni Woodruff
A warmhearted picture book about showing love & appreciation
It’s amazing what the human heart can do. Sure, it pumps blood and keeps us going, but it also beats faster when we encounter the people we love. Your Heart Can Hold the Whole Universe isa sweet rhyming picture book that draws attention to the wonderful ways that humans can show their love.
The book begins with a short poem about how doctors may say that there’s a certain size to the human heart, but those doctors must not know the girl we meet in this book. A testament to the concept that, “The more love you have to give / the bigger your heart can grow,” this girl appears on every page and impresses with the sheer amount of good things she does for others. It’s a book that admires goodness in others, that speaks to your child about doing good things and leading with your heart. The girl we rhyme about will stop at nothing to do good things for others, whether they be older than her, younger than her, or walking on four legs. She’s a sweet, caring protagonist whom your child will easily admire.
I like a lot of things about this book, but the main one is that it tells your child, while you’re reading to them, that you notice the good things they do. Being recognized can go a long way as a child and can even influence them to do more good things in the world because of it. A children’s book capable of getting your child to look out for and love others is a useful book in my eyes.
The rhymes move swiftly and make for a quick page-flipping experience. And luckily, each one you flip to is sweetly illustrated with soft pastel colors and admires a kindhearted human quality. There’s positivity jumping off of each page in this book.
Atanossova praises what the heart can do. The rhymes often tend toward hyperbole, illustrating that the heart has an incredible capacity to love and that you, little reader, are capable of big love too. The hyperbole of the title, Your Heart Can Hold the Whole Universe, brings up a cool conversation to have with your little one about the real heart in their body and the heart they can show every day.
The book is narrated by a young boy we meet on page 3 and who shows up regularly, but the primary focus is on the girl with all of the admirable qualities. It’s a sort of poetic letter to her, explaining all the ways he’s impressed by what she does. It’s not overly clear he is the one narrating, and it seems instead that the book is talking to the reader with its second-person “You,” but over time it becomes clearer that we are focusing on one girl with these traits—not directly to the child reader. Some pages cover a similar theme or topic in slightly different words, which can be fine, but at around 40 pages, it can get slightly repetitive. The final rhyme of the book also leaves me wanting.
Your Heart Can Hold the Whole Universe is a lovingly crafted children’s book that leads with love and encourages your child to do the same.
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