This heartwarming picture book reassures children that a parent’s love never lets go—based on the poignant lyrics of JJ Heller’s beloved lullaby “Hand to Hold.” “May the living light inside you be the compass as you go / May you always know you have my hand to hold.” With delightful illustrations and an engaging rhyme scheme, this book offers the promise of security and love every child’s heart longs to know. From skipping stones and counting stars to climbing trees and telling stories, every moment is wrapped snugly in the certain warmth of a parent’s presence and God’s blessing. With poignancy and joy, this bedtime read captures the unconditional love parents want their children to know but so often fail to express amid the chaos of daily life.

Can you hold onto someone with your heart instead of your hand? When it's time to start school, a little girl must let go of her father's hand in order to reach out and grab hold of something new.

A true-adventure, coming-of-age tale set in the exhilarating first wave of Beatlemania … It’s 1964, and 16-year-old Janice is struggling in a grim foster home in Cleveland when she falls suddenly, deeply in love … with the Beatles. They and their music stir in her an ecstatic new sense of freedom. With a friend, she hatches a bold plan to escape their dreary lives and run away to London to meet the Fab Four. On their own for the first time—in “Beatleland”—they explore a new city, a new culture, and a new life, visiting the hippest clubs of Soho, meeting some nice English boys, hitchhiking to Liverpool … But unbeknownst to them, the runaways have become international news—and a hunt is on. Adventure and newfound freedom end abruptly when Janice is apprehended by London police and hauled home to Cleveland and an unforgiving juvenile justice system. Warned by responsible adults to put it all behind her, she doesn’t speak of her extraordinary adventure for more than fifty years. In this memoir, she looks back with fresh insight on the heady early days of Beatlemania and an era in America when young women exercising some control over their lives presented a serious threat to adult society.

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl falls in love with boy… SCREECH! No. It can’t be that easy. (You knew that, right?) Boy meets girl. Boy can’t fall in love with girl. She also has secrets. He’ll try to uncover all her secrets. But in doing so, he’ll have to remove all the walls she hides behind. Leave her bare and aching. And what happens then? Girl meets boy. Girl falls in love with boy. Boy can’t love her back.

Fiction. Is there hope within even the darkest hearts? A woman has sex with her dead mother's husband. A child sleeps in a makeshift nest. A sister betrays a sister. A woman takes on the persona of a dead prostitute. All are in search of that which eludes them: an acknowledgement of a shared past, the fulfillment of a secret desire, a n tenuous connection made whole. Within I AM HOLDING YOUR HAND an array of tender, stark, authentic, and sometimes very lost souls discover a reason to live through their capacity to see beauty in the everyday and instead of coming to conclusions, they discover a way to begin again. "I AM HOLDING YOUR HAND is a heartfelt collection of deaths: deaths of people, dreams, love, and hope. In this gritty collection, Myfanwy Collins gives voice to characters learning to live on despite such deaths. Characters who often act badly, but who are all the more believable and sympathetic because of their mistakes, failings, and struggles. Myfanwy Collins brings such compassion and tenderness to her stories while never sparing the stark truths. One of her characters tells us, The air was so sparse that our breath whispered back into our mouths to feed us. These stories whispered into me. They fed me."—Ethel Rohan

This sweet picture book celebrates the unbreakable bond of a parent's support for a child though life's milestones, from learning to walk to the first day of school and all the highs and lows in between. From the night you arrive to your first night away, from learning to crawl to healing a broken heart, and for all the highs and lows in between. . . through every season, every challenge, and every joy, you are loved. With sweet, lyrical text from Maggie C. Rudd and stunning art by Elisa Chavarri, I'll Hold Your Hand celebrates the unbreakable bond of family, and all the ways our actions can say “I love you” louder than words.