LOVE… can you count it? D.J. does with his Mummy, all the way to the number ten. [What type of books is this? Picture book? Middle grade? If you don't tell me here, I may presume it's a novel for adults, which will make the next few lines seem a bit odd.]
"How much do you love me Mummy?" says D.J.
"I love you 1 (one)," says Mummy. "One kiss on your little button nose."
"Do you love me more than one?" asks D.J.
"Of course, I love you 2 (two)," says Mummy. "Two kisses, one for each of your lovely bright eyes."
In 'I Love You 10' [a picture book for ages what to what?], Mummy bestows kisses on D.J. from his nose right through to '10 (ten) kisses, one for each of your wiggly little toes'.
Well, ten seems like a lot! But can love really be counted?
'…Mummy points to the millions of twinkling stars, lighting the whole of the night sky. "Even if you could count every star…you would never be able to count how much I love you."
This picture book [aha! here is the information I needed - but are you submitting text only, or text with illustrations?] explores and strengthens positive emotional intelligence, counting basics, and naming of body parts for young children in 317 words.
My stories are based on actual conversations with my four homeschooled children, in response to their questions, observations, and wonder. [Do you have a writing background? It's okay if you haven't - you're allowed to say, 'I've never written before but was inspired to so by ...' but if you say nothing at all about it then I have very little idea about who you are and why you're writing. Have you read other picture books? Have you researched to see if there are any books like this already?]
I have enclosed a SSAE for your convenience [only send this if requested], and I thank you for your consideration.
General feedback: You can't presume that an agent/publisher will guess what type of book this is. We all see a lot of submissions and we're usually reading them quickly - tell us straight up what sort of book it is and who it's for, because if you don't we may not make it through half the letter to find out. For a picture book you don't need to have the same length of query letter that is needed for a novel - as there's less story to describe - but picture books are a highly competitive genre (many people write them, there are few published each year) so you need to identify why yours is different to what's already available. If you have not done any research to find out what else is available, you may find that you are wasting your time if there's a similar book out there.
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