List Price: $15.95
Publisher: KaneMiller
Author: Colin Thompson
Age Range: 5-9
Release Date: 05/2008-Australia, 09/2008-USA
Rating:

The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness is the perfect title for this book by Colin Thompson. Reading it, I teared up and broke out giggling often within a single sentence. I’ve read it more than twenty times now, and each time I find myself reacting as if I’m reading it for the first time. It is simply that well written.

This is the story of George, a young boy who “lived alone with his grandmother and an empty place where his mother and father should have been”. George would visit the dog shelter every Friday on the way home from school, desperate to be in a place where something was lonelier than he was. It is here that, at the end of the row of cages, he meets a new friend. A scruffy sad dog that he can relate with. The dog has a limited time to live. George convinces his grandmother that they have to adopt Jeremy, a three-legged dog that no one wants.

In George, Jeremy finds someone who is devoted to helping him overcome his disability and enjoy life in ways that he never had been allowed to before. In Jeremy, George finds warmth and companionship and something that helps to fill that empty place inside.

George and his grandmother come together to find a way for Jeremy to experience the simple joys of being a dog. Jeremy goes along for the adventure simply thrilled to have found himself in a family that loves him, and not at all expecting the joys that he will find when they come up with a way to help him overcome his disability.

STYLE

Colin Thompson knows how to take the reader on an emotional roller coaster that safely exposes you to the saddest of emotions and concepts in the happiest of ways. This book cultivates empathy like few others that I’ve read, and does so with far more mastery. The writing of this book is heart-wrenchingly descriptive of the loneliness of an orphaned child and the hopelessness of a dog waiting to be put to sleep. It is equally as descriptive of the amazing happiness that the two of them find in one another.

The illustrations are imaginative, sweet, and full of personality with a style that has a stylized messiness similar to the popular Far-Side comic series. The illustrations are highly detailed and convey both emotion and motion to the story. They start out dark and gloomy with characters that are obviously caught up in their sadness and loneliness and move to bright colors as the characters find hope and happiness and Jeremy brings George and his Grandmother together into a true family unit.

AGE APPROPRIATE CONTENT

The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness is a very emotional book that encourages empathy and compassion while exposing children safely to some very difficult concepts of disability, death, lonliness and the painful reality of what happens to abandoned animals in this country. The message is both sad and happy at the same time, making this sadness easier to digest.

Children’s stories all throughout history dealt with difficult topics, helping children understand and cope with sadness through story. Somewhere along the line the decision was made to shield children from these things. Sadly, children today are shielded more from emotional experiences than they are from violence and sexual content. This is a bad mistake.

This book not only touches on the difficult topic of death, but also the topics of loneliness and disability. Despite these difficult topics, the overall message that a child will come away with is a positive hopeful one that embraces many concepts at once. That friendship can be found in someone “less than perfect”, that great joy can be found in helping others overcome disabilities, that life is fragile and sweet, and that sometimes hope can be an amazingly powerful thing in our lives.

If you are shielding your child from all things emotional or if your child is too sensitive to handle certain topics, you might want to avoid this book. For all other children this book can be a valuable emotional experience and will very likely become a childhood favorite. I know that this book would have been one of the most dog-eared books on my shelf when I was a child.

THE BOTTOM LINE

This book is simply beautiful in so many ways. Its story, its message, the words and artwork all work together seamlessly to create a wonderful book that is as full of happiness and sadness as life itself. It will make a great addition to your child’s library, and the story within its pages will make a great addition to your child’s emotional arsenal as they grow.