The Light of a Mom: The Most Beautiful Flower

PreS-Gr 2–Written by the author as a Mother’s Day gift, this cloying encomium pairs misty watercolor views of birds, flowers, and of a white child nestling in her mom’s lap and then growing up to be a mother, all in a narrative that is more overwritten than poetic. “I used my cuddle blanket on the green grass as I leaned my heart to my Mom,” Partridge writes. “‘The flowers only open up when they receive light,’ shared with grace by my tenderhearted Mom.” Both as a child and later a parent, the author recalls moving many times (readers may have questions at this point, which will go unanswered), awkwardly observes that our “lives will always live within simple homes,” then goes on to conclude that “what we all need are memories of some light from your Mom.” Hallmark-style quotes about mothers from two inspirational writers precede a full recap of the text, on a theoretically detachable final page with a suggested image of a mailbox.