Blueberry Girl ~ by Neil Gaiman, 2009

This book is a prayer for a blueberry girl, written by Neil Gaiman for a friend who was about to become a new mother and called her unborn baby Blueberry.

I bought this book for my first great-grandchild and gave it to her grandmother (my daughter) a couple of weeks before the baby was born.  It was a Sunday and I was invited out to eat with my daughter's family, including her pregnant daughter with her husband.

That same morning I had learned about this book from my friend Ellen.  Within two hours I had researched Blueberry Girl online, liked it, gone to the bookstore near where I was to meet the family for lunch, and bought the book.  While online I had listened to Neil Gaiman read the whole book (all 2 minutes, 20 seconds of it), and before lunch I had time to enjoy the pictures on every page of the actual book.

You're probably thinking I'm a bit strange to give a picture book to my daughter, who's in her forties.  My great-granddaughter was due soon and I was going to lunch with her parents, so why did I give the book to my daughter?  Ah, because it was her birthday, and it would be her first grandchild making an appearance.  Her parents had already named her Raegan, knowing the baby was a girl.  This seemed like a perfect book to read to one's first granddaughter.  I've already shared this photo, taken nearly three months after I got excited about this book, but it's the only picture I have that shows all four of us:  me, my daughter, my granddaughter, and Raegan, the one who has a Blueberry Girl book (along with many others) at her grandmother's house.

Listen to the whole thing poem by Neil Gaiman on this video that floats the wonderful illustrations by Charles Vess all over the screen while you listen.  "This is a prayer for a blueberry girl ... Help her to help herself,/ help her to stand,/ help her to lose and to find./ Teach her we're only as big as our dreams./ Show her that fortune is blind ... Give her all these and a little bit more, gifts for a blueberry girl."

Girls have not always been allowed to follow their hearts, as I'll be sharing when I review books for the Women Unbound reading challenge.  May Raegan's future be blessed with the freedom to pursue her dreams, just as Neil Gaiman imagines it for all the girls in all those beautiful illustrations.  I rate Blueberry Girl a 10 out of 10.