Book Review - Believe in the World: Wisdom for Grown-Ups from Children’s Books

“What you see and what you hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

This book will live on my coffee table for a while. It’s full of snippets of wisdom, the kind of messages that can change your day if you’ll let them.

Many of the quotes contained in this compendium are from books I know and once loved (I spent so many elementary school snow days curled up in bed, reading C.S. Lewis’s books before and after sled rides and hot chocolate!).

We’d been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realized that if we boosted one another, maybe we’d get a little closer.

-Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray

As a mom, I also love that the quotes contained here are an opportunity for me to discover new children’s books, ones that my daughter may someday fall in love with on her own snow days.

The human body is ten percent hydrogen. Which means ten percent of us is as old as the universe itself.

-Tae Keller, Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone

I don’t know when it happened or why, but I know it did. At some point in my then-young life, I gave up my belief in magic and my desire for adventure in favor of “real life.” And while I’ve done some amazing things, I haven’t had as much fun as I used to. Not since I gave up stories and imagination and adventure for all the “real life” stuff.

This book returns me to that younger but ancient part of myself. It reminds me to chill, to seek magic. It gives me permission to see life like my daughter does, or at least how I imagine a two year old sees life. She is like the weather, ferocious and angry one moment, but so quick to recover and laugh and give me a hug, her eyes sparkling like sunshine on the sea. I want that for myself, too: the ability to be neurologically and emotionally flexible, to keep choosing calm and joy and sparkling eyes.

My sister had taught me to look at the world that way, as a place that glitters, a place where the calls of the crickets and the crows and the wind are everyday occurrences that also happen to be magic.

-Cynthia Kadohata, Kira-Kira

Believe In The World: Wisdom for Grown-Ups from Children’s Books is available on Amazon (and may also be at your local bookstore).