What the Road Said

Jun 18, 2025

An excellent choice for last minute graduation and year end gifts, this long form poem for two voices allows the reader and/or little listeners to converse with the future, the road ahead, while promoting kindness and curiosity and the will to keep going along the way. The delightful illustrations gentle and bold along with the dynamic design sensibility all envelope the reader in the landscape, moving them along on the journey.

This book is just as much for children as it is for adults. Being a parent right now is a harrowing experience. Watching the world unfold and unfurl around us as we reach and stetch to embrace our family hoping to provide both physical and emotional shelter for our little tiny beings for as long as humanly possible, all with the heartwrenching knowledge that fellow parents everywhere are struggling or unable to acheive the same. Special books like this can open the door for our little ones and ourselves to step into introspection, facilitating big meaningful talks of the future and the past and the present, moments and conversations that are critical to keep us moving forward and ones that we will both hold close as we walk to road together.

Quick disclaimer that this book can induce crying. A few years ago we gifted a copy to my little one’s first nursery school teacher. My next meeting with her that summer was met with happy tears and hugs and the news that she had been so moved that she read part of the book at her daughter’s wedding where those tears were shared with others. And when she told me all that I cried, too.

One of our favorite mainstays at bedtime, I can feel the days when this affirmation is needed and re-reading it blankets our little one with the reminder of their purpose and possibility and importance.