Are You My Meaning?

Sometimes finding the right answer isn t as important as asking the right question. Are You My Meaning? is an engaging story about language and meaning. BeeBee starts out by asking what words mean and discovers that words aren t the only thing with meaning. Once she figures that out, there is no end to the questions she asks. What s it all about anyway love? work? family? the quest? If this sounds like questions that you occasionally ask yourself, read the story to your kids. Maybe they ll have some answers. Or not. At the very least, the story will generate questions from children and whoever is reading to them. It s a great beginning for a conversation about who we are, and how we find what we want, one conversation that is never too early --- or too late --- to have.

B.H. Rietveld grew up in different countries, where she learned how to say "What does that mean" in several foreign languages. Each time people answered, she wrote down a new word down in a notebook. Soon she had notebooks full of foreign words, which she put together in sentences. The notebooks got so full after a while that the sentences started spilling out all over the place. So she tried collecting questions, which she neatly stacked on bookshelves. Now THAT collection has grown so big that it takes up over half of her study, leaving less and less room for any answers. What next? Caroline Leibowitz, a graphic designer and illustrator, knew BeeBee for at least a year before she drew her picture for the story. How else could she have known what color berettes BeeBee would wear while she was running around asking questions?