October 3, 2022
In this picture book adaptation of 2016’s The Book of Joy, the Nobel Peace Prize winners recall childhoods growing up “on opposite sides of the world.” Mixed-media art by López (The Year We Learned to Fly) initially evokes the specificity of the narrators’ respective homelands, soon moving into more metaphoric idyllic settings, rendered in radiant hues, that spotlight rainbow-like ribbons and are populated by a global cast of joyful children. In initial spreads, readers see young Tutu in a sunbaked town (“One of us grew up in a little house”), while the young Dalai Lama roams a monastic-seeming building’s expanses (“One of us grew up in a big house”). Though loneliness and isolation seem to initially define their respective lives (“Both of us wished for a friend”), each discovers that by opening their hearts to the beauty around them, they become more resilient and hopeful. “If you just focus on the thing that is making you sad, then sadness is all you see,” reads a spread that shows a zoomed-in moment of sadness followed by fuller, more hopeful context: “But if you look around, you will see that joy is everywhere.” With unalloyed optimism, the pages earnestly lean into the creators’ comforting promise: “As it spreads from person to person, the world will fill with JOY.” Ages 3–7.