A quirky and surprisingly funny picture book about the many practical uses for tears, for fans of Big Feelings.
In an attempt to cheer up a sad-looking worm, a narrator makes things worse by causing the worm to cry. But in the process of trying to make the sobbing worm feel better, the narrator starts to think of the various ways tears can be used productively.
For example, if you’re sad around lunchtime, cry until you fill a pot with your tears and boil pasta — you won’t even need to season with salt! Crying can be used to dilute paint, and with paint, you can make beautiful art. Crying also serves lots of different purposes. Without tears, the rivers would dry up. Clouds would keep getting bigger and bigger. And crying also helps the pears to grow, and with pears, you can make jam. Jam makes people happy, and can help staunch the flow of tears . . . at least until the jam runs out!
Join a tearful worm and a bungling narrator as they explore the many uses for tears in this hilarious and quirky picture book by up-and-coming author-illustrator Noemi Vola.
In If You Cry like a Fountain, the author and illustrator Noemi Vola highlights the practical benefits of crying with quirky and surprisingly fun examples, like crying around lunchtime so we can use our salty tears to boil pasta. Yeah, you can laugh? I did too! And, as a big crier myself (for real, I even have a t-shirt saying 'I'm pretty cool, but I cry a lot'), I found this picture book for early readers genuinely delightful.
The book begins with a sad and tearful worm and an unseen narrator, who shares various ways to 'cry better'. The ideas are sometimes silly but always creative, and I smiled a lot while reading. The colourful illustrations are full of humour and greatly enrich the message. Everyone cries, and that's okay.
The book will be a good-hearted resource for discussing feelings and emotions and help develop young kids' emotional self-regulation. And I do know it would have to help me when I was a kid. The only downside is that it's too short. The story could be better told with a few more pages. For example, in the beginning, I felt like crying wasn't okay, in the 'keep your chin up' way, which seems dissonant with the themes of the rest of the book. Besides that, I would love it if, in the future, there's a Portuguese version so I can buy that for my younger cousins and goddaughter.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
