Family Fridays: I Lost My Kisses by Trudie Trewin

Guest blogger Stori shares one of her favorite children’s books!

Book: I Lost My Kisses

Genre: Children’s general

Ages: 2 to 8

Blurb:

Matilda Rose loves to kiss. But one day, something goes terribly, horribly wrong. She loses her kisses, just before her daddy is going to come home. Matilda goes on the hysterical and thoughtful search to find her kisses.

Matilda Rose learns that you can never really lose your kisses — they will always be there when you need them.

Review:

This book is so cute.  Just precious. No, it’s actually like cute married precious and then gave birth to I Lost My Kisses.  I find that as child reader turned adult reader turned parent reader there aren’t that many new-to-me books that I enjoy reading as a boring old grown up.  So often I find myself only reading my daughter books that I loved as a child because I still love them, but new books have a hard time piercing my cynical shell and reminding me of the way I used to think when I was little. At this point we have joined Matilda Rose on her quest to find her kisses at least a hundred times, and each time we mourn with Matilda Rose when she cannot find her kisses and no one seems to be much help. We get nervous as Daddy’s arrival approaches and she still does not know what kisses look like. And we rejoice when Daddy comes home and gets the big kiss that Matilda Rose has been storing in her heart for him all day. I know you aren’t supposed to say this about a novel not written by Josh Grisham… but I Lost My Kisses is gripping. You should see my nails – they are down to the nubs.

I don’t know anything about art or art appreciation and I have no vocabulary on the subject so I don’t usually notice or comment on drawings. I may embarrass myself here, but I really loved the illustrations. The pictures were exaggerated without being cartoonish, and I loved the minimal-with-the-occasional-bright-splash color scheme.  Toddlers love repetition and they will enjoy and soon be repeating Matilda Rose’s little song that she uses to call for her long lost kisses.  If your child is a little older, consider stopping at each point in the search and asking him or her what kisses look, feel, taste, and sound like.

I think I Lost My Kisses is Trudie Trewin’s only book sold in the USA, and I am hoping that she has more coming. As is typical for her age, my three-year-old goes through those monotonous stages where she wants the same book read to her over and over again, and as her primary reader, I actually enjoyed her “I Lost My Kisses” phase.  It is a very cute book that children and parents will enjoy, and the best part of the story is that you get to end it with your own big smootcheroo!

Get it! Amazon, Barnes and Noble

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