Mama Duck waits on her nest, talks to her egg, and loves what is inside before she has even met it. When her duckling finally hatches, every wobble, splash and stumble gets the same answer: I have loved you from the start. Around them, the other farm mamas and babies echo the promise in their own small ways.

Tabitha Paige tells it in gentle rhyme under soft, realistic watercolors, and the result is the rare bedtime book that parents do not mind reading on a loop, partly because it says the thing every parent actually means. It reads in about five minutes, lands every time, and holds up to the two hundredth night.

A 32 page hardcover with a proper keepsake feel, this is the book to write an inscription in. Baby showers, birth announcements, first Valentine's Days: when the gift needs to say something true, this one already does.