megan jacobson

I wrote a picture book! Isn’t this cover by Beck Feiner just gorgeous?

Two and a half years ago I had a baby, and the love I felt when I first held her was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. There were no words in all of the dictionaries in all of the languages that could describe the love, but I wanted to at least try. One sleepless, heart-bursting, fog-headed evening as I watched my daughter drift off to sleep, I started to get an image in my head. It started micro, then expanded to the world, the solar system, and then the universe, and then it enveloped even that. It was this shining ball of love that was bigger than anything known in our physical existence. I couldn’t stop thinking of it – I wanted to put this image into words, to explain to my sleeping baby just how much I loved her. This is where the genesis of BIG LOVE was born.

She was still tiny then, so I was singing a lot of lullabies. I realised that even though my daughter didn’t know language yet, she knew that when I sung to her, it meant I loved her. So I wanted the words of BIG LOVE to reflect that rock-a-bye, lullaby lilt. I tried to make the words knock against each other in a sing-song way, like a lullaby does, so that even if my daughter didn’t know yet what I was saying, the sounds of the book would be soaked in love.

I sent the manuscript off to my agent, who loved it and sent it off to Beck Feiner, who she thought would be a good fit for my words. It is incredible how Beck took my words and added texture and humour and her own stylish, special life to it. I’m so lucky to have her beautiful artwork adorn my words, and we’re both so lucky to have the book be published by Walker Studio in early November. I love Big Love, and I hope you do too.

Big love to you and yours,

xx m