This uneven chronicle of the enduring mother-child bond follows Sara as she grows from childhood through cranky adolescence to young motherhood. As with the parent-child relationship in Love You Forever, each time she encounters a speed bump on the road of life, her mother is always ready to help smooth over life's bumps—with a hug and a refrain ("Close your eyes, my baby. This too shall pass. Hush the hurt, my heart. Tears may fall but I am here, so hush"). The situations often end with facile solutions (after a girl pulls Sara's hair at school, she tells the perpetrator that "she's hurt her feelings" and the two play together at recess), and the first-time author covers a great deal of territory here. Feelings of teenage angst, for instance, may be lost on the picture-book crowd. Priestley's (Someone Is Reading This Book) wispy, soft-toned watercolors, on the other hand, offer more than first meets the eye. She conveys a range of emotion in a sherbet-colored palette, from Sara's joy at acing a fifth grade math test to her adolescent heartache when dumped by her first boyfriend. Through the intertwining of arms and the tilt of heads, Priestley gives the connection between Sara and her mother depth and poignancy. All ages. (Mar.)
