The Birthday of the World: A Story About Finding Light in Everyone and Everything

by Rachel Naomi Remen MD, Rachell Sumpter (Illustrator)

Overview

From Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, the New York Times bestselling author of Kitchen Table Wisdom, a modern retelling of a timeless story about healing the world by finding light in everyone and everything, illustrated by Rachell Sumpter.

In the beginning, there was only darkness, and then a great ray of light ended the darkness and the world was born, the world of a thousand thousand things. It was filled with light. Then something unexpected happened, and the light of the world broke into millions of sparks of light. These sparks fell everywhere. They fell into everyone and everything. This is why you were born and I was born, and why everyone was born—to find the light and change the world.

The Birthday of the World is a beautiful retelling by a beloved author of a timeless story about finding light in the darkness, one spark at a time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951836344
Publisher:	Abrams Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	341,861
Product dimensions:	11.00(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, or Dr. Rachel, as she is known, is a pediatrician, professor of family medicine at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine, and clinical professor of family and community medicine at UCSF School of Medicine. In addition, she is the author of the internationally bestselling and beloved Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings. Birthday of the World is her debut book for children. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Editorial Reviews

"The painterly images are beautiful, making stunning use of color and light. . .Visually stirring." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2022-07-13
On a child’s fourth birthday, their favorite person in the world, their grandfather, tells them what happened when the world was born.

As the grandfather tells the story, a page turn takes readers from a mainly dark page with a picture of a birthday cake to a stunning kaleidoscope of color. “A great ray of light” brings darkness to an end, and sparks fall into the world and into everything in it. A multicolored spread showing a diverse collection of living beings, each with their own spark, conveys the grandfather’s story in dazzling colors and engaging details. Unfortunately, the text does not have the same charm. The phrasing doesn’t flow; rather, beings are listed: boys, girls, dogs, rabbits, plants, trees, etc. The grandfather then explains that these sparks are still within us, but “We can’t see them with our eyes / We can only see them with our hearts”—a line that feels too similar to the famous quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (1943). Though the painterly images are beautiful, making stunning use of color and light, the text is preachy as it details what people can do to make their sparks and the sparks of others shine more brightly. The child and their grandfather are light-skinned and cued Jewish; other characters are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

This visually stirring but heavy-handed attempt to teach children empathy and awareness falls flat. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews