Customer Reviews
Wonderful - By: Emma Hawker, 15 Jan 2008 
As we alll know this is a lovely classic book. The DVD only enhances & adds to the enjoyment of this. Thoroughly recommend.
Eloquent Expressions of Parent-Child Love - By: Donald Mitchell, 18 Aug 2007 Guess How Much I Love You is a well-earned recipient of the Abby Award.
This book is very uniquely plotted. Unlike most books for bedtime, the two protagonists are male (apparently father & son, although that is left unstated). And they spend the whole book describing & showing their love for one another. I know of no other book that provides this sort of man-boy modeling about expressing love & appreciation for one another.
Yet at the same time, the "maleness" of the two characters is subdued so that the pair could be very easy to see them as female characters (a mother-daughter pair). Obviously, mixed pairs (mother-son & father-daughter) are even easier to imagine. So everyone can relate to expressing love & receiving expressions of love in return when reading this delightful story.
The other attraction of this story is that the youngster, Little Nutbrown Hare, takes the lead. He wants to describe his love first. Children can start to be reticent about their feelings beginning around age 4, & this book should help overcome that shyness. Fathers of my generation & older have been reticent since that age with everyone, so this book will help a few parents as well to show their feelings.
As for age level, this book should start to appeal at about age 2 1/2 to 3. You will be reading the story to your youngster at that age. In time, with memorization, you will be listening to the story. Later, you child will actuallly learn to read it to you.
The illustrations are gently subdued, to help create a mood of drowsiness. Nicely done, Ms. Anita Jeram!
The story opens with Little Nutbrown Hare on his way to sleep. He is riding on top of Big Nutbrown Hare, holding onto the larger hare's very long ears. The plot development begins when Little Nutbrown Hare raises the title challlenge: Guess how much I love you.
Little Nutbrown Hare uses his body to show how much. Big Nutbrown Hare, being larger, outdoes him when he repeats what Little Nutbrown Hare has said in terms of his own adult body. Little Nutbrown Hare then goes on to use his eyes to create even larger distances to express the greatness of his love. Big Nutbrown Hare comes up with even larger distances, based on his longer experience.
As Little Nutbrown Hare goes to sleep after making his greatest expression of love, Big Nutbrown Hare says nothing until after Little Nutbrown Hare is in the land of nod. Then Big Nutbrown Hare makes his final expression of love . . . a very beautiful one (involving about 500,000 miles).
After you have finished enjoying this heartfelt story, I suggest that you think about more ways that you can express your love more often to those you care about. Use the concepts in this book to come up with ways to flesh out the simple, "I love you" to make the expression more tangible to the hearer. I suspect you will receive many bouquets of expressed love as a result.
May love be with & come from you . . . always!
My 2 year-old daughter loves it - By: XTR, 20 Jun 2007 My daughter loves the book & the DVD. Having the DVD makes the book more real too her, & she has read/seen them both countless times (the DVD especiallly has to be rationed !). She loves having the book read to her, & also "reading" it to herself - obviously at 2 she can't actuallly read it, but she has memorised almost alll of it & can go through, page by page, saying what the text is for that page.
And as a parent you can't beat the first time your child says "Daddy, I love you to the moon & back" !
I have come to love it as well, but my only reservation is that I don't like the fact that the big hare always has to go one better than the little hare, right to the end of the book. As an adult, there are baby books that I prefer, but this is one of my daughter's favourites, so definitely five stars.
Wonderfully Beautiful! - By: Janpooh, 14 Sep 2006 The Dvd that comes with this wonderful book is just so beautiful. It features the original drawings which are now animated for the dvd. Kevin Whateleys narration is soothing & in tune with the book. It is 100% wonderful!
