I Just Couldn't Wait to Meet You - Kate Ritchie

I Just Couldn’t Wait to Meet You – Written by Kate Richie and Illustrated by Hannah Sommerville

(5 / 5)

I don’t often take my son to the library. He loves books, but he doesn’t really like the quiet of the library, and his attention span is still only about 10 seconds! But considering he is starting school next year, I thought it would be good to start to go a bit more regularly. He was very excited about getting his very own library card, and we went through to the children’s section to borrow his very first book! I assumed that he would go for something with dinosaurs, but he spotted I Just Couldn’t Wait to Meet You on the display shelf. He said that the babies were cute and exclaimed “This is the one I want to borrow Mummy!” It wasn’t until we got home and he asked to read it that I even realised it was written by Australian actor Kate Ritchie. I didn’t even know that she had written a children’s book!

I Just Can’t Wait to Meet You is a beautiful story about a mother to be, waiting on the arrival of her precious baby. She wonders if it will be a boy or a girl and what they will look like, and describes how much love she has for them before they even arrive.

I was unexpectedly touched by this book. As I was reading it to my son, it brought up a lovely conversation about how I was feeling when he was in my tummy. He was asking me if I was excited, and if I knew if he was a boy or a girl. And then we started talking about what it was like when he was born and what he was like as a baby. All these things we had discussed before, but he usually gets so distracted so it was lovely to have the conversation when he was really thinking about it. He was telling me about how he was excited to meet his sister when she came out of my tummy, and how much he loves her, even though she yells and pinches him sometimes. My heart just about melted!

The illustrations throughout the book are just GORGEOUS and it is really beautifully written. An extremely pleasant surprise, I might even buy a copy for the kids!

What did my kids think of I Just Couldn’t Wait to Meet You?

My daughter (1 year old) loved pointing at the babies and saying “Bubba!”. She’s too young to have understood the story I think, but she loved the pictures and the rhymes.

My son (4 years) thought the story was very sweet and loved all the pictures. I am not sure if he is going to want to return it to the library! I have already had to read it to him 5 times!