I feel like I should seek out some gentle, looping font to write about Heart String by Brooke Boynton-Hughes (2022), because the title is made by gentle, looping multicolored strings.
These strings run through the book, connecting page to page, image to image, and person to person. This unity fits well with Boynton-Hughes’s message, which is that connections between people and hearts can be found everywhere, stretch across miles, and persist, no matter what.
Stories drive some picture books. Spectacle drives some picture books. Pictures drive some picture books. Then there those like Heart String, books that seem more like mystic reflections somehow packaged as a children’s picture book. Those books, like Heart String, tend to unify image and text.
This is a quiet book. If you’re looking for something like the David books or the pigeon books (both of which I love), look elsewhere. But if you want a book in the lineage of Goodnight Moon or Love You Forever, look here.
