I'll Be You And You Be Me by Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak

I've been thinking how I should write about this book for a long time. It's very hard, because when I hold it in my hands and leaf through the pages, I feel like there's a waterfall of love that engages my whole body in pure joy and connects me to the source of all things good, all things directly related to sunshine, wonder and life. But as usual, that leads to me writing about my own feelings about it rather than about the book itself; so having gotten that out of the way, I'll try to describe why this book is the best ever.

Each page is a different distillation of the experience of childhood into words and illustrations at the highest level of poetic purity. Each page is about a different way to experience love. Each page is about a very very very simple way to experience the universe in an intimate and meaningful way through other people.

Ruth Krauss writes very much like a child might talk, but not in a way that most adults infantilize children. The writing is absolutely respectful, kind, and honest. She is clearly somebody who took children and their existence extremely seriously - and this book is a real testament to that. She explains things through dialogues and interactions between characters and Maurice Sendak offers his illustrations as possibly ways to play with her words and thoughts.

Collaborations between creative geniuses can either lead to disaster or genius, and this book is a testament to the latter. One of my favorite things about the illustrations is that these were done well before Sendak was famous; this is well before Wild Things  - this is the third book he ever illustrated. I am always so overwhelmed with the ease and the grace with which he makes the essence of childhood accessible to humanity; This is something that I too try to do with my life, and I know how amazingly difficult this is.

I am ok if people don't read this book until they grow up. As I have mentioned I don't believe that books should ever be allocated for a particular age group - any book can be smelled, and held, and leafed through, and admired and wondered about at any age. Children can look at a page in a dictionary and experience the placement of small black marks on a page that will affect, and relate to, and create a memory of things we could never teach and explain to them in words. And adults can read a book like I'l be You and You Be Me really feel what it was like to have been, and to be a child in a way that even playing with their own children won't make them feel.