Hoda Kotb wrote this for her daughter Haley Joy, and the whole book turns on one idea: that two people were already headed toward each other before either of them arrived. In the universe, there was you and there was me, waiting for the day our stars would meet. It is a poem more than a story, which is why it reads aloud so well to a child too young for plot.

Suzie Mason paints it as a birch wood at dusk. A single white star burns between the trunks, level with the adult fox's head, and below it she sits in profile in the grass with her head bowed, her cub in front of her and lower, tipping its face up toward hers. Their noses come close without touching. The palette is deep blue and turquoise with a pink and lavender wash across the top of the sky rather than nursery pastel, and the animals carry the weight of the text without a word of explanation, which is what keeps the book from tipping into sentiment.

This is the board edition, thirty two thick pages sized for small hands, and it has become a standard baby shower and adoption day gift for exactly the reason the text implies. If you want the same sentiment in a picture book format for an older child, I've Loved You From the Start sits on the same shelf here.