My rating: 5 stars
Book blurb from Goodreads:
A book of hope for uncertain times. Enter the world of Charlie’s four unlikely friends, discover their story and their most important life lessons.
The conversations of the boy, the mole, the fox and the horse have been shared thousands of times online, recreated in school art classes, hung on hospital walls and turned into tattoos.
In Charlie’s first book, you will find his most-loved illustrations and some new ones too.
This book is truly beautiful, in both physical form and contents. Each line of the drawings holds so much unspoken emotion, as do the simple and straightforward words that accompany them. This is a book that is so much bigger on the inside. A book that has so much heart you will find yourself crying within a few pages despite the genuine sweetness of the message it shares.
What Charlie Mackesy has done is open himself up across these pages, and in doing so has offered us a way to open up our own souls. Like this, for example:
My dog walked over the drawing – clearly trying to make a point
It is my favourite page because up until that point I’d been trying not to cry on the book and then I stopped worrying and just let myself read with the tears falling as they wanted.
This is a book that asks big questions and gives quiet, pertienent answers that help heal the scars that life leaves on all of us.
But most of all this is a kind book.
And what I mean by that statement is not only is this a book about being kind – to yourself, to others, being kind because that is the most courageous thing we can do in this life – but kind in and of itself, for the simple reason that it offers up the message in such a soft, open and encouraging way.
If I could afford to buy everyone a copy, I would do so.
Kizzia Mildmay 