It’s Up to You, Abe Lincoln:
How I Made the Biggest Deci-
sions of My Life (Crown Books
for Young Readers, New York,
2018, $16.99), by the father and
daughter team of Tom and Leila
Hischfield (what better expression
of love?), is a different approach
to understanding and celebrating
Abraham Lincoln. While his love
of our country cost him his life, his
legacy endures. This books sheds
new light and interesting informa-
tion on the “facts, feuds, historic firsts, and famous quotes”
that help us better understand who he was and what drove him
to rise from poverty to become one of the most influential and
famous men in the world.
My Heart (Dial Books for
Yong Readers, New York, 2019,
$17.99), sensitively written and
simply and beautifully illus-
trated by Corinna Luyken, is the
perfect way to end our February
books offerings. This book gets
to the essence of the month and
true meaning of love — heart
energy. We are most often gov-
erned by our heart and we usu-
ally feel before we think. My Heart helps us to be more aware
of our feelings and how these feelings can change from joy to
sadness and back to joy, always moving with us and respond-
ing to our experiences and the world around us. While all of
these emotions can seem complicated, the book presents them
in such a pure way that is easy for all to understand. The fi-
nal pages of this beautiful book express the essence of our
heart experiences, “My heart is a shadow, a light, and a guide.
Closed or open… I get to decide.”
Love can be hard to define, but we think we know it when
we feel it. It is knowing and recognizing the different kinds of
love we experience that can often be best understood through
the experiences of others and the stories they tell.
With so many book options, from simple board books,
beautiful picture books, and chapter books, both fiction and
nonfiction, we can begin to learn and talk about our relation-
ships and the kinds of love we feel. So let’s take Valentine’s
Day to a whole new level this February by celebrating it with
books which speak to our hearts!
Dr. Donna Phillips is an associate professor in the College
of Education at Niagara University where her specialty is lit-
eracy and children’s literature. She lives on Grand Island, NY
and is the mother of two adult children and the grandmother
of one.
February 2019 WNY Family 17