Making Memories: IN A JAR

This will be brief.
Not because this book deserves little attention, but because it is a brilliant reminder to nurture the life beyond ourselves- in the natural world, but especially in relationships. As soon as possible, get your hands on this book and get busy making memories in real life.

IN A JAR is the recent picture book written and illustrated by Deborah Marcero.

Penguin Books for Kids

Someone I dearly love began, with her first baby's first breath, to whisper the words "Let's make some memories" in that infant's ear. She repeated some version of that mantra preceding the mundane and miraculous, the planned and the unexpected, throughout her kids' lives, including their eye-rolling adolescences. 
Now adults, I expect they'll do the same with their own eventual families.
This picture book is eloquent in words and images, offering that same invitation to the tot audience and to the adult reader, the ones holding books and turning pages. It calls all to be intentional, to be direct and in the moment, to savor and save, and to use those moments to root us in deep relationships. 
Digital screens have value. Our brains (big ones and little ones) are drawn to them. But on the other side of a human-screen relationship, no one is THERE.  No one remembers back. There is no authentic emotional link, no one to smile with, or cry with, or just KNOW us.

There are countless wonderful things about this book, and meaningful ways in which it reveals nature and seasons and life cycles and longing. But mostly, it just might launch someone into making memories.

For more details about this book (and added praise), check out starred reviews from KIRKUS (HERE), and SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL (HERE). The Booklist starred review included this:
*”Marcero works magic with prismatic watercolors, ink, and pencil, as her light-filled illustrations chronicle the young rabbits’ exploits and their appreciative wonder of the world around them . . . This joyful account of friendship will charm readers with the notion of capturing wind or a rainbow in a jar, but its deeper message of maintaining relationships over a distance will comfort those who have moved or know someone who has.” —Booklist, starred review