I'll Be You and You Be Me

Back in print with gorgeously restored artwork! From beloved children’s book creators Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak, this classic jacketed hardcover picture book about love and friendship perfectly captures the wonders of being a child.

This whimsical collection of tales told in poetry, prose, and even a play and a song, and described as a “Krauss-Sendak scrapbook” by the New York Herald Tribune, radiates friendship, love, and the togetherness of childhood. First published in 1954, this romp through the wild and wonderful imagination of children has been a favorite read-aloud for generations.

HarperCollins is proud to present this new edition of I’ll Be You and You Be Me that has been printed in close collaboration with the Maurice Sendak Foundation to ensure that Maurice Sendak’s original artwork has been reproduced to the highest standards.

Don’t miss these other books by Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak!

• Somebody Else’s Nut Tree
• A Hole Is to Dig

“Author Ruth Krauss and illustrator Maurice Sendak, with a little help from some young friends, capture all the ups and downs of friendship. A charmingly meandering series of stories, poems, and pen-and-ink line drawings feels like a scrapbook of kid-speak.” - Amazon.com

“On each page is an idea of friendly play or loving inspiration, delightfully accompanied by the line drawings of an understanding artist, Maurice Sendak. The author must have listened with wide open mind to the many children to whom she has dedicated this entertaining little volume.” - Christian Science Monitor

“ . . . And anyone of any age will find the reality of childhood in Maurice Sendak’s pictures. Small, delicately drawn, they have a force and an ebullience out of all proportion to their size.” - New York Times

What a book! It is a Krauss-Sendak scrapbook, more or less on the theme of love and friendship as the nursery age expresses it in very brief stories, plays, ‘poems,’ ‘mysteries,’ dreams, and many potent exclamations stuck into corners of pages.” - New York Herald Tribune