What Love Looks Like by Laura Obuobi (review)

Reviewed by: What Love Looks Like by Laura Obuobi Kara Forde Obuobi, Laura What Love Looks Like; illus. by Anna Cunha. HarperCollins, 2024 [32p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780063222434 $19.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R 3-6 yrs Young Afia kisses her papa goodnight and snuggles into bed under her bright patchwork quilt with her stuffies, but she can't—rather, won't—fall asleep. She's not ready yet, because the summer light leaves an impression of a world that was wide awake, and so Afia is inspired to stay awake as well, calling for Papa to ask, "What does love look like?" A patient and loving Papa takes her hand, suggesting they [End Page 371] head out into the wide world to find out. Obuobi ushers in some bedtime magic with simple, transportive transitions—a beam of light, a gust of wind, a drifting cloud—as father and child explore a sense of love in natural places. Among warm desert sand dunes, on icy mountaintops, at a breezy seashore, Afia and Papa discover love in the sensations of being tickled by the sun, making silly tracks in the snow, and running and jumping in the wind that also graced the waves of the sea. Elegant prose, peppered with alliteration while embracing simplicity, accentuates this story's dreamy idealism. Delicate illustrations eschew any concept of hard lines, blurring every edge and layering smudgy contours in each scene except one, a spread in which Afia and Papa's bright, focused eyes look up at the twinkling celestial sky in a wind-down cuddle. Cuhna's color palette is particularly compelling for this bedtime book, bright with repeated uses of pink, red, and mustard yellow, yet remarkably unified with a darker purplish-grey undertone, reinforcing the theme of slumber. One final sleepy scene, after Afia and Papa's reciprocal expressions of love, shows a book by her bedside, which sheds light on the power of story and imagination in examining what matters most in life.