Motherlove Book

The love of a mother for her young, it is said, is the best echo of love divine. In animal and the human species alike, a mother's love gives and forgives, directs and protects and puts the heart in a home. This book is a celebration of Motherlove.

Author Biography: Virginia Kroll does not do her writing in a secluded cabin or an ivory tower, but in her own home that bustles with the activities of her six children and other members of the household—including many pets. She is also a prolific writer, at least in the very early hours of the morning when everyone else is asleep. The strength of her compassion and perception come through in her four books published by Dawn: Motherlove, With Love to Earth's Endangered Peoples, Cat! and When God Made the Tree.

Author Biography: Lucia Washburn illustrated Motherlove while her two-year-old daughter, Megan, played with crayons at her own little table nearby, or looked at animal pictures in a pile of reference books. Lucia loves mothering and illustrating. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and lives in Petaluma, California. This is the fourth book she has illustrated, the first for Dawn Publications.

Children's Literature

This book is a celebration of "Motherlove." Kroll's rhyming text, "Some mothers are furry./ Some mothers are purry;/all mothers are wonderfully warm," points out the common attributes of various mammal and bird mothers, while an accompanying prose text (with a much more advanced vocabulary) provides information about the distinctive characteristics of the various animals depicted, such as "Purring is a vibrating sound of contentment made in the throats of many cats, both wild and domestic." The page-filling illustrations of soft, cuddly, and even smiling llamas, lions, swans, and other animals are large and detailed in warm pastel tones. The attribution of human feelings to animal parents is problematic in a book that also stresses factual information. All mothers in the animal kingdom are not always "fantastic at loving," nor do they keep their young in their "hearts forever."