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The Real Story Behind This Best Selling Children's Book Is Not What You're Expecting

August 5, 2014

"I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."

Robert Munsch / Illustrated by Sheila McGraw

Robert Munsch's children's book, Love You Forever is one of the best-selling kids' books of all time. And today I learned the real story behind the book.

Robert Munsch shared on his website:

"I made that up after my wife and I had two babies born dead. The song was my song to my dead babies. For a long time I had it in my head and I couldn't even sing it because every time I tried to sing it I cried. It was very strange having a song in my head that I couldn't sing.

For a long time it was just a song but one day, while telling stories at a big theatre at the University of Guelph, it occurred to me that I might be able to make a story around the song.

Out popped Love You Forever, pretty much the way it is in the book."

This book always brought a tear to my eye even before learning that it was first conceived as a song about the author's two stillborn babies.

To this day, it has sold about 15 million copies.

(H/T) BabyCenter, Reddit, RobertMunsch