Mama’s Best Boy

In this beautiful story, bestselling author Zeruya Shalev illustrates how children learn the difference between factual truth and the truth of the heart.

Every day Adam’s mother tells him he is the best-looking, smartest boy in the world. But at pre-school, he finds out that other children do some things better than him. Maybe my mother is wrong, Adam thinks. Later, at the pizza parlor, he sees a plain-looking boy with a runny nose, whose mother also tells him he is the best-looking in all the world, and Adam is surprised. “Every child is the best in his mother’s eyes,” his mother explains. “There is no real ‘best’.” The next day, Adam doesn’t care what the other children think of his drawings. But when he stands up to make a speech for Daphne’s birthday, it comes out in rhyme! “I’ll teach you the letters and you can teach me to rhyme,” Daphne whispers to him.