The Mushroom and The Flower: How kids’ picture books often relay messages and morals that adults ought to heed
Coffee table books are great for when friends visit and you’re not quite ready to entertain them, halfway through getting dressed, or what not. While they wait for you to get your act together, they can flip through a pretty book that’s sitting on the table. But, seriously, how much are they going to soak in, in the span of eight minutes?
The Mushroom and the Flower is a cute book that can be flipped through and absorbed within a few minutes, featuring gloriously neon illustrations juxtaposed with rustic, neutral hues, and containing a story that surprisingly questions the value of vanity. Sure, it’s a children’s book, really, but the message applies to adults, too, asking if we can learn to share the spotlight with new additions to our social circle.
Like many of the best picture books, its lesson becomes more meaningful as you’ve lived a little longer. It’s why we love to recall (and can still relate to) classics such as ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’.
The premise is wonderfully simple: a bright pink mushroom enjoys being the centre of attention and is proud of being unique. When a flower begins growing beside her, she has to decide whether someone else’s beauty diminishes her own or if they can both flourish together. The author, Sally Soweol Han, describes it as a story about “giving friendship time to bloom” and learning to share the spotlight. For children, that’s a lesson about sharing and making friends. For adults, it touches on several deeper truths: that another person’s success doesn’t erase your own; that identity doesn’t have to depend on being overly “special”, and the bottom line that real friendship begins when competition and one-upmanship ends.
Once we stop measuring ourselves against others, we’re free to appreciate them. That’s true in workplaces, families, creative communities, and relationships just as much as on a forest floor.
Reviewers have consistently noted that the colorful books by Soweol Han speak to readers of all ages, despite their simplicity. The Mushroom and the Flower brightly carries on that tradition.
The Mushroom and the Flower is published through Thames & Hudson, RRP $26.99.
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