Title: Songs for our Sons
Author: Ruth Doyle
Illustrator: Asling Lindsay
Publisher: Andersen Press
Genre: Children’s picture book
Book format: Paperback
Sweet Strawberries: 
Description: On a star-scattered night a child is born with all their life ahead. A joyous gift, a creator of hope, and builder of a gentler, brighter world.
*Free copy provided by publisher for review…
Review: This is a lovely picture book and poem/message to all boys who read this. ‘Songs for Our Sons’ is around A4 in size and is filled with thick matt pages of some lovely illustrations and text. From the first page, this book is filled with lots of rhyming passages with positive messages to boys, or sons.
The first page begins with a few words about the new baby that has come into the world and the potential future it holds before moving on to talk about the wonderful things that boys can do when they grow up. There are encouraging words that boys can do whatever they want to, and there are pages with passages that talk about how it’s ok for boys to feel pain and express it, and be happy with who they are. The book very much feels like one whole poem broken down into short verses on each page with the overall message in the story being a positive one to boys to be themselves and to enjoy their future lives.
The pictures in this book are so lovely. I really love the way the children all look on each page and how much detail there is to see on so many of the pages. There are lots of little extra details within most of the images and I just love the general feel of them and the lovely colours used throughout.
Overall I think this is a lovely book to give as a gift and one which I’m sure boys would appreciate looking through as they grow up. However I do think that the poetry and message might be lost to some young children without an adult to explain some of the words, and some children might not really understand the meaning until they are a little older. This is still a lovely book to get as a gift and I’m sure many will enjoy looking at it, especially as they grow up, but I’m just not sure if this book would be one that children would love to look at repeatedly or on their own as much as some others picture books out there, and maybe this would be more appreciated by adults reading to their children rather than just the kids.
What do you think of this book? Do you like picture books with poetry for children? Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂
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