The Everlasting Embrace

Each morning as the sun brightens the West African sky, mother and child prepare to start their day. They spend it bound together, the child riding on the mother’s back watching their world go past. Pounding millet, drawing water from the well, visiting friends, shopping at the outdoor market?days are shared in perfect step with one another. And even when the child grows big enough to go off and explore their world, the everlasting embrace endures.

Illustrated with E.B. Lewis’s stunning watercolors that bring to life the land and people of Mali, Gabrielle Emanuel’s tender story celebrates the universal bond between mother and child.

Gabrielle Emanuel lived in Mali for a year after graduating from Dartmouth. She worked in the health sector in the small town of Bandiagara and later in the capitol of Bamako. She would often read to one little girl, and was dismayed that none of the books available reflected the landscape and culture of the country. For the next two years she was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford studying public policy; she now works at NPR in Washington, D.C., where she currently lives. Gabrielle has always loved traveling and storytelling. The Everlasting Embrace, her first book, gave her the opportunity to combine those loves.

E.B. Lewis has illustrated many acclaimed picture books, including his collaborations with Jacqueline Woodson: Each Kindness, The Other Side, and Coming On Home Soon, which was named a Caldecott Honor Book. He received the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for Talkin’ About Bessie by Nikki Grimes. He teaches at the University of Arts in Philadelphia and makes his home in Folsom, New Jersey.