About this book

I love you more than cones love ice cream.

This gorgeous, playful book opens up infinite possibilities for saying I love you that carry on long after closing the book. Follow along as young Des’s day winds him through his busy, diverse neighbourhood, highlighting different relationships across age, gender and race, and moments bound together by love.

Through Emil Sher’s delightful word play and acclaimed illustrator Barbara Reid’s vibrant modelling clay art, I Love You More creates a rich experience for young readers and brings a wonderful affirming feeling to storytime.

This story was inspired by a favourite game the author played with his now-grown daughters — one readers can carry on in their own way, with their own loved ones and in their own hearts.

A Note From the Editor

I Love You More is a cozy shared reading experience that is also a fun and engaging puzzle, both in words and in art. Author Emil Sher’s clever text on its own is a series of wordplay, governed by a set of playful rules around the relationship and order of the pairings. Readers can find their favourite “I love you more thans” in the book. At the end, a “Now It’s Your Turn” section sets them on the path to carry it on limitlessly on their own.

The embedded story of a boy and his community comes together entirely visually, through Barbara Reid’s gorgeous, detailed scenes. On a first glance, readers will see that the text and art are not perfectly matched right to the page they are on—but over the book. That is by design, to engage readers to come back again and again to spot all the things that connect the people and neighbourhoods of the story.

Once a reader sees this in play (we anticipate in many cases that children, with their acute visual reading skills, will grasp this before their adults), they will be drawn in to find all the visual connections layered in (Hint: follow the hearts and pops of red, and look for people from one page to another as they wind through the neighbourhood). The rewards lie both in the limitless possibilities of figuring out the wordplay and carrying it on, and for finding the literally hundreds of visual Easter eggs Barbara Reid has lovingly tucked into the book.

Extras

“Come along and play” videos!: