The Runaway Hug by Nick Bland, illustrated by Freya Blackwood
Lucy is all ready for bed and asks her mother for a hug. When her mother jokes that is the last hug she has left, Lucy offers to borrow it and return it. Lucy heads off to lend the hug to different members of her family, making sure to get it back each time. Each hug is different, some tighter others smell like peanut butter. When Lucy gives her dog a hug though, the dog runs off and Lucy is sure that she has lost her mother’s last hug forever.
Bland and Blackwood make a great team for creating picture books. Black’s tone is playful from the very beginning and one knows that this family is something special just from the way they speak to one another. Throughout there is a sense of humor and an enduring affection for one another that permeates the book. Bland also does a great job of keeping the book securely in Lucy’s point of view, so that readers know from the very beginning that Lucy is taking this last hug seriously. There is no laughing at Lucy for this, rather it serves as the heart of the book and this imaginative play is celebrated.
Blackwood’s illustrations have fabulous soft lines that blur and flow. Blackwood leaves some of her lines from sketching on the page, creating a sense of motion but also a feeling of the connected nature of the world right on the page. She also adds to the warmth of Bland’s writing, her home that she places this family in filled with warmth, some clutter, and reality.
A beautiful pick for bedtime, just make sure you aren’t down to your last hug! Appropriate for ages 2-4.
Reviewed from copy received from Random House Children’s Books.
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