The Book She Brings Me Every Morning

The book is a board book. Twelve pages, thick cardboard, a story about a dog that loses its ball and finds it again. Nothing remarkable about it — I have read better books to her, more beautiful ones, ones with more going on. But every morning, reliably, she goes to the shelf, pulls this one out by its spine, and brings it to wherever I am. She holds it up. This one.

I started paying attention to which part she stopped at. Not the beginning, which is where I always start. Not the ending, where the dog finds the ball and everyone is happy. She always wants pages seven and eight. On those pages the dog is standing very still, looking up at something that is not shown — something off the top of the frame. Its ears are up. Its head is tilted. It is waiting, or listening, or wondering. The text says: 'Where did it go?' She puts her finger on the dog's face every time. She says something I cannot decode. Then she says it again.

At two, she has no interest in plot. She does not know what a story arc is. She cannot follow a sequence of events across twelve pages and feel the resolution at the end. What she can do — what I think she is doing — is recognise a feeling. That dog on page seven is feeling something she has felt. Something in the expression, the posture, the quality of the waiting. She finds it every morning because she needs to.

I had thought picture books were for teaching her things — colours, animals, words, shapes. But she is not going to this book to learn anything. She is going to be understood. The dog on page seven knows what it is like to be looking for something and not finding it yet. She knows that feeling too. She is two. She encounters it constantly.

I look at our shelf differently now. Not: which books are educational? Not even: which books are beautiful? But: which books show a child something she already feels? That is the one she will bring you every morning.