Love you Forever: Creepy or Sweet?

My family and I have an ongoing debate about the book "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch. This book has been extremely successful, with more than 15 million copies sold. I remember first hearing of this book when we discussed it in my "Sociology of the Family" class at DePauw. I started thinking about this book again while shopping for books for Baby Roach

People either love it or hate it. I happen to fall into the "hate it" category. I personally believe this book is creepy and twisted. It's a bizarre tale of a mother that apparently can only tell her son that she loves him when she sneaks into his room when he's asleep and sings him this sappy little song. The story gets twisted when she continues this after he leave home and starts his own family. She breaks into his house, crawls into his room and rocks her grown son and sings the same sappy song. The table is turned when mom gets sick and the son breaks into her nursing home and rocks the mom and sings the same sappy song. The story ends with the mother dying and the son rocking his child and singing the same sappy song.

Now, I've been told that this book will mean a lot more when I have kids (In about 2 weeks!) but I doubt it. In this book we never see the mother expressing her love to her son when he's awake. We never see the son's father. We never see the mother acting as a grandmother.

People who like this book say it's about unconditional love. To me, this is a story of a kind of unhealthy co-dependence continuing through generations. And it end with a death. What kind of kid's book is that? Apparently this is a common debate. Just read some of the 316 reviews at epinions.com of the 511 reviews at amazon.com. Some of the posts do recommend alternative books about unconditional love that look much less creepy, includingGuess How Much I Love You and Owl Babies.

And the debate continues.