America My Love, America My Heart by Daria Riley

America My Love, America My Heart expresses complex emotions about the author’s home country.

America My Love, America My Heart by Daria Peoples Riley. Greenwillow, 2021, 32 pages.

Reading Level: Picture book, ages 4-8

Recommended for: ages 6-10

America, the Brave,

America, the Bold;

America, to Have,

America, to Hold;

America, my country,

Do you love me?

That’s the plaintive question recurring through this picture book with its water-washed illustrations of red, white, blue, and gray. Speaking as a person or child of color, the narrator seeks to be loved fully: for everything she is or will be; for everything he says, in any language; for every dream and every history—because, “America, I am you/ America, you are me.” The wistful, musing tone raises both sympathy and frustration. And questions:

• Do we ask the same of other countries? Or just the one country that specifically welcomes other colors, languages, and cultures?
• Does your country have a responsibility to “love” you? If not, what would that look like?
• Do you have a responsibility to “love” your country? If so, how?

In a postscript, the author recalls being the only brown girl in elementary school, feeling out of place while saying the Pledge of allegiance. The sense of not belonging is understandable, but she goes further: “My country, America, didn’t feel free to me.” To other children of color, who might feel they have to change in order to belong, she writes, “[t]hose people are the ones who need to change. It is their responsibility to learn how to love all of you better . .  . You are not wrong to be you.” Maybe not, but is all the obligation on one side? Though provocative, this book could be a springboard to further discussion about what a citizen is, and what a citizen owes.

Overall rating: 3.75

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic/literary value: 3.75

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