children

There are few things more enjoyable and deeply satisfying than reading a book to your kids. It sets kids up for early reading success of their own helps them learn how to identify and describe their feelings. And we parents get a lot out of it, too. Reading aloud to your kids quite literally synchs up your brainwaves and helps you feel a close senes of belonging and improved well-being.

Every family has their favorites; the books they return to over and over. But a lot of the most famous and well-known, even beloved, children's books aren't without controversy. The Giving Tree, for example, has been in the crosshairs for years for preaching what some people say are toxic or harmful messages about self-sacrifice. And how about the Rainbow Fish? Where the beautifully bedazzled hero of the story is vilified for not wanting to give up his shiny scales to others just because they asked. What kind of message is that?!

Perhaps no book elicits stronger reactions on either side of the spectrum than the one, the only: Love You Forever.

First released in 1986, Love You Forever bv Robert Munsch is a certified classic and one of the most famous picture books of all time, often mentioned in company with Goodnight Moon, Green Eggs and Ham, and Where the Wild Things Are.

Even if you've read it, you might be familiar with the central refrain of the story: "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be."

The tale follows a new mother who sneaks into her baby's room at night to rock him and sing him this tune. The boy grows older, but that doesn't stop mom from picking him up and cradling him with the lullaby, even when he's a big smelly teenager. In one of the most beautiful yet hotly debated moments, the mother drives across town in the middle of the night with a ladder strapped to the roof of her car, sneaks into her now grown son's house, and rocks him while she sings: "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be."

In the end, it's the grown son who travels to his aging mother's house to hold and rock her while singing the song. It's implied that she dies, and the man returns to his home to hold his newborn baby daughter.

Over the years, some parents have found the book creepy or unsettling and wondered if it romanticizes poor boundaries. But on social media, the new generation of dads is just discovering this classic and it's turning them into blubbering wrecks.

"I was not prepared for this," one dad posted on Reddit with a picture of the book Love You Forever.

Below, dozens more chimed in about how the book emotionally devastated them in the best way.

"My mom used to read this to me as a kid and she would always get choked up. I grew up, got a job and moved into a house across town. I had daughters of my own and their bedroom was in a room at the top of the stairs. My mom passed a few years ago. I am the guy in that book. I can't get through the whole thing."

"It needs a disclaimer: ensure you have tissues on hand, preferably man size."

"My mom died nearly two years ago. I used to get choked up reading this to my kids while she was still alive. I can't make it through it anymore."

"This was one of those books that makes you realize Men DO cry and we cry HARD and UGLY"

Men may not cry easy, but we cry hard.Giphy

"I bought this for my mom as a birthday present like a decade ago before I had kids. We never had it when I was younger, but I'd always heard about it. I read it, but just thought it was cute. ... Fast forward to when my oldest was born, my mom then bought this book for me, and I finally read it as a parent. Instant waterworks. Amazing what being on the other side of things will do to your perspective."

"My wife hates this book but my 1 year old girl adores it. She always takes it off her shelf and brings it over for me to read. Granted she normally just shuffles through it for the pictures but it’s always a kick in the gut. My parents haven’t been doing the greatest as of late so this book always gets me right in the feels."

The dads urged readers not to take the book so literally. Of course it's weird that the mom drives across town during the night to rock her grown son to sleep! But that's what really drives home the book's message of unconditional love, and how the job of a parent is never truly done.

Some people theorize that men and women have very different reactions to the book. Where moms may see themselves in the mother and may be unsettled watching their entire life flash by in just a couple of pages, dads may see themselves in the young boy who grows up and has to say goodbye to his mother as he begins his own family. Men with young kids often have a mother of their own that's growing older and frailer, their dynamic and relationship changing, health failing — the book is sweet and silly and makes kids laugh, but it hits men in that phase of life extremely hard.

The book only hits harder when you learn about why Munsch wrote it in the first place.

Anecdotally, this book seems to hit dads way harder than it hits moms.Scott Alan Miller/Flickr

According to Huffington Post, the author and his wife suffered multiple stillbirths. The short rhyme or lullaby started off as a little poem Munsch would sing to himself as a way to grieve.

"[The song] was my way of crying," he said. The couple was lucky enough to later adopt three children, but was never able to successfully conceive one of their own. Munsch continued to sing the lullaby to himself in remembrance of the children they had lost.

One day at a live reading, Munsch developed a story around the poem on the fly, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. That story eventually became the basis for his book. It was initially rejected by his publisher for being too dark (which makes some sense) before becoming an all-time classic.

Today, Munsch is 80 years old and Love You Forever, his most successful children's book, has sold over 7 million copies.

The book isn't for everyone. Some find it unhinged or emotionally manipulative. But it's a story that came straight from the heart of its grieving author, and if you're like me, you can still hear your own mom reading and singing it to you when you were little. It's not my absolute favorite, or even the most fun to read, but it's definitely the most powerful and emotional book in our collection. Unlike other books that my kids outgrow, this one only hits harder and harder the older they, and I, get.