Customer Reviews

So Happy!

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Written in a throughly engaging prose poem style by Newbery Honor Book author Kevin Henkes, and strikingly illustrated by Anita Lobel, So Happy! is the picturebook story of a boy, a rabbit, a magic seed, and a book (which the reader is holding in his hands). The seed grows into a beautiful flower, the boy wanders looking for something to do, and the curious rabbit explores until he is lost... but happiness awaits at the end of a long day, when the rabbit comes home to sleep cozily, and the boy finds the flower that the seed became - it's the perfect gift for his mother! A warm-hearted picturebook intended for ages 2 and up.

The prose is so simple, it's stark:

The seed is thirsty
The rabbit is lost
The boy is bored.

Three separate stories unspool on the same pages, seemingly unlinked until the end: The boy busies himself and in the process saves the rabbit and finds a magic flower grown from the seed.

In a press release, Henkes said he kept the lines spare to allow Lobel room to breath. It was Lobel who decided to set the story in the parched southwest with a Mexican family, invent a father whose departure creates the boy's sour mood, and visually weave the three threads into a unified whole.

She uses watercolors in a warm Mexican palette and deep earth tones to conjure up the boy's narrow world: his house, a sudden storm, an engorged creek and the rabbit's frantic scrambling in the brush.

For adults, this is a lesson on how an author let go of his work so an artist could transform it in unexpected ways. For kids, it's a fun romp about a rainy day.

I love Kevin Henkes books but had never seen this one. I read this story to my 3rd graders without showing them the pictures. I then asked them to draw the "picture in their mind" in their sketch journal. We reread the book with the pictures. The next day the children painted, using watercolor, a picture of what makes them truely happy.

So Happy! is a collaboration between Newberry Honor and Caldecott Honor recipient, Kevin Henkes and famous writer and artist Anita Lobel, who has been a finalist for the National Book Award. It is a story set, presumably somewhere south of the border, judging from the rich, lush colors of the artwork. Henkes introduces us to, what seems like, three strands of disconnected narratives - one about a magic seed which can't grow due to the lack of rain, the second about a rabbit who gets lost while wandering by a narrow creek, and the third about a boy who wants to do something but can think of nothing.

The story, therefore seems to be at a standstill. But things change when it rains and the creek gets wider, preventing the rabbit from crossing it and the boy gets an idea. As the sun shines, the seed becomes a plant and the boy gathers sticks to make a bridge. Soon a rainbow appears and the bridge is complete, allowing the rabbit to cross the creek and go home to its family. The flower becomes ready to be given as a gift to the boy's mother and the story ends with the indication that the cycle of life, subtle as it may be at times, will continue.

The way the three stories come together shows how things that seem to share nothing in common can unify under a common cause. Can life be interpreted as a series of coincidences? This serendipitous story seems to say so. If the story doesn't appeal to you as much, the artwork, reminiscent of Van Gogh's style, certainly will.