Review - A Bottle of Happiness

A Bottle of Happiness
by Pippa Goodhart
illustrated by Ehsan Abdollahi
Date: 2019
Publisher: Tiny Owl Publishing
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 28
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

There was once a big mountain with two villages on either side. The people on one side were rich and worked only to get richer. The people on the other side of the mountain were poor but had a wealth of stories and laughter. One day, a poor young boy decides to seek a new story and this leads him to the rich people's marketplace. He would love one of the ripe pieces of fruit, but what can a poor boy trade? Find out if it is possible to bottle and share happiness in this timeless fable, exquisitely illustrated in an eye-opening and unusual style.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This story, almost a fable, has a really heavy-handed message. The ending is abrupt and facile. I do like the illustrations, though.

There are two villages on opposite sides of a mountain. One is wealthy, and the other is poor (but rich in happiness). One day, a boy named Pim from the poor side goes over the mountain to check out the rich side. He's amazed by the bounty in the market, but when he wants to have some fruit, he needs something to trade. He tries to bottle happiness, laughter, and love in his own village to trade for the fruit.

This goes about as well as you'd expect, and the rich villagers laugh at his foolishness. For some reason, though, this counts as positive laughter. (This is one aspect of the book I don't like. There's a difference between amused laughter and mocking laughter, as anyone who's been on the receiving end of the latter can tell you.) Then Pim starts to sing and--inexplicably--the rich people all join in and soon it's one big love fest and they're sharing their bounty. This book almost appears to be a statement about capitalism versus communism (or something like that), so the ease with which the rich folks give up their material goods seems a little unrealistic. (Besides which, if you displace the story to our world, the rich most certainly do have access to music and laughter! So I'm not even sure what the overall message of this story is supposed to be. Like it or not, we live in a capitalist society at the moment, and I'm not sure if I like the fact that this book seems to be disparaging the one village where the people are trying to make a living. It's not as if they refused to give Pim the fruit outright; they merely said he needed something to trade for it. So... the barter system is bad, too? I don't know.)

The illustrations are perhaps the strongest part of this book, if only because they're so unique. I've never seen anything like them! They're sort of patchwork watercolour drawings... with almost a Picasso-esque look to them. Lots of fun to look at. Unfortunately, the text and writing don't quite measure up to the visual aspects of the book.

Overall, this is a fairly weak fable that seems confused about what it wants to say. But I would recommend checking it out for the unique illustrations.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tiny Owl Publishing for providing a digital ARC.

Premise: 3/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 3/5
Illustrations: 4/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.83 out of 5