If I Were a Pony

This is a grandfather's love letter dressed up as a pony poem, and it earns its emotion honestly. The concept — a pony who watches a boy grow from child to "grown man" — lets Eckhaus do something a lot of picture books shy away from: he tracks the whole arc of a relationship across time, from "You would bring me an apple / And I'd eat it with joy" through to the ache of "But if I were a pony / And too old to ride... I'd have tears in my eyes." That's a real theme for a picture book to hold — companionship, aging, and the bittersweetness of memory — and it doesn't flinch from the sad part, which is exactly what gives the joyful ending its weight.

The read-aloud rhythm is simple and steady, built for a parent or grandparent's voice: short quatrains, easy rhymes (boy/joy, ride/glide, near done/sun), the kind of repetition ("If I were a pony...") that young kids latch onto and start reciting along with. It's not innovative structurally — it's a familiar ballad form — but it's controlled, and the turn into the elegiac final third ("I'd remember how we frolicked / without any fears") shows real intentionality in the shaping, not just verse for verse's sake.

Given the dedication, this book knows exactly who it's for: a grandparent reading to a small child, and eventually that child rereading it as an adult and feeling the second half land differently. That's a lovely, specific kind of book to be.