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Arts and Entertainment
Local Women Team Up to Offer
Inclusive Children’s Book
“When something powerful and beautiful is a struggle to create, the outcome is often more truly valued.” This statement is in the author’s note of Melissa Larsen and Christina Schmidt’s elegant and poignant new children’s book, Because We Choose to Love You, and perfectly captures the little book’s themes.
Larsen, the author, is a certified social worker practicing in Salt Lake while Schmidt, the illustrator, wears many different hats: behavioral therapist, artist and interior designer. The two women have been working over the past two years to create a book for young children which addresses the uniqueness of family situations, driven by their mutual mission “to inspire all families to provide acceptance and love.”
That mission is reflected clearly in the book’s simple text. Larsen employs classic children’s book techniques such as rhyme and repetition to reinforce her theme of acceptance, balancing a poetic sensibility with simple language for children in lines such as this: “we chose to keep you safe from harm/we chose to keep you healthy and warm/we chose to give you unconditional love/because you were sent from the heavens above.”
Perhaps the book’s strongest attraction is the stunning illustrations by Schmidt. Each page features a picture of a simple subject—a house, a stream, a mother and child—rendered in a highly dramatic style. Schmidt’s use of color is as bold and striking as a child’s would be, as she contrasts deeply saturated blues, reds, and greens with one another or works in brassy yellows and vibrant reds. The illustrations are acrylic paintings but Schmidt’s technique makes them look like surreal, strangely sophisticated crayon drawings—finger painting as Van Gogh the toddler might have done. These beautiful images are the perfect complement to Larsen’s elegant text, reinforcing the books themes of safety, comfort, and warmth while stimulating the imaginations of both parent and child.
The book will have particular resonance for the children of gay and lesbian parents. These kids and their families are often misunderstood, maligned and sometimes even threatened. They can often feel different from other children not just because they have same-gender parents, but because they are not the product of traditional conceptions or are adopted. How comforting for such a child to be able to curl up with their mothers or fathers and be told that their parents chose to love them.
Larsen and Schmidt, who have published the book themselves under the auspices of the Grapevine Press, have taken their commitment to social service beyond the office and into the home, and in doing so, they have created an eloquent, thoughtful and touching little book that any family could enjoy.
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