I Miss You Every Day

Taback, Simms. I Miss You Every Day. New York: Viking, 2007.

When the sun is shining bright / or when it's wet and gray / I think about you all the time / I miss you every day.

From the creator of the Caldecott-winning Joseph had a Little Overcoat, comes a story for anyone who has ever missed someone so much that they dreamed of making themselves into a human pretzel and stowing away in a friend’s suitcase. In this case, our protagonist decides to mails herself from New York to California to join a friend who has moved away:

I’m going to jump inside a nice big box / I don’t care what you say / I’ll write your address on the front / I miss you every day.

The simple rhyming sequences, most of which end with the haunting repetition of “I miss you every day,” create a playful sing-song veneer while leaving room for the reader/listener to fill the book with as much emotion as they want. The story doesn't attempt either to force an intensity of emotion or to avoid it, but works with a light touch and delivers a satisfying ending that reunites and reassures.

Taback’s visual style combines the emotional honesty of the kid-art aesthetic with the masterful design of an award-winning children’s illustrator. The pictures are bold, stylized, colourful and rich with detail (including a lot of environmental print in the form of everything from signs to candy wrappers to postcards to famous picture book covers). Street signs, addresses, and cityscapes give the book a grounded sense of place from which to explore distance and separation - in this case the story arcs from New York to California - but rather than narrowing the audience, this specificity of place serves to make the distance seem more tangible in a way that strengthens a feeling of universal appeal.

This book speaks well to the experience of separation, as distinct from the experience of loss. It might not be the best book to comfort a child for whom a possible reunion is not in the picture, but the emotional content will still resonate for many. If it came in a thin postcard-sized gift version, I can think of several friends who would mail it to their out-of-town sweethearts.

Warning: If you are missing someone very much, don't try reading this book out loud at storytime. I Miss You Every Day is one of those deceptively simple books that just might undo you at exactly the wrong time. For this same reason, it will also be a powerful tool for echoing and affirming the very strong emotions kids carry with them.