Remember Margaret Wise Brown’s The Runaway Bunny? That little gem of a book has reassured generations of children that their mothers will love them no matter what. John Carter Cash, only child of country music greats June Carter and Johnny Cash, has written down the comforting musings of his late mother with all the love of that earlier classic.
In Momma Loves Her Little Son gentle rhyming couplets accompany Marc Burckhardt’s full-page gouache illustrations that show a mother in various settings with her son. The mother’s words repeat her love, “From the top of the tallest skyscraper, and around the far side of the sun / all the way from east to west / Momma loves her precious one!” In any situation, from as far away as China and even to the starry skies, June Carter described her deep love for her children, and we are lucky her youngest son has recalled her words.
John Carter (which is what we in Nashville always call him) heard these words from his mother’s lips when he was a little boy and if you are familiar with her voice, it will be easy to picture the scene. June’s love of her children is well documented, and I can imagine her singing this lullaby to any of her children. Burckhardt’s paintings appear to have been created on planks of wood, giving the whole book a down-home, read-me-at-bedtime feel.
Every child needs to be reassured while falling asleep and this volume will remind the child—and his mother—of the joys of the parent-child bond.
