Love Is Powerful Nominated for Cybils Award
This is listed as fiction, but a back page reveals that much of the inspiration behind this story comes from actual events featuring a young girl who experienced the 2017 Women's Protest march first hand. At a very young age she began to develop limited awareness of the what and the why of the march, but needed the day with a bigger realization.
The power of her own voice, raised for the cause of love and kindness, was undeniable.
The illustrator's approach presents multiple perspectives of preparing and then participating in the march, in raising her posters overhead, and finally, in finding her voice. Throughout it all, the illustrator provides energizing images of multi-age, multi-background, multi-cultural and racial masses of people, many wearing hats with pussy ears. The reference to that is never mentioned, providing an appealing documentation of that event and that social movement for any age. Posters are evident, but only those that are kid-friendly (or parts of posters that fall into that description) appear throughout the pages.
From her perch upon her mother's shoulders, the little girl displays her "BE KIND" poster, and another that states the title of the book: LOVE IS POWERFUL, she shouts. At first a few nearby marchers respond back, which launches a repeating cycle. Eventually, her call and response is leading the chants of everyone within hearing.
This very empowering story is a reminder that every voice matters, that each individual counts, and that change happens slowly but DOES happen.