BOOK REVIEW: Hundred. What you learn in a lifetime. By Heike Faller and Valerio Vidali @heikefaller #valeriovidali @celadonbooks #hundredbook #celadonreads

A beautiful book filled with the lessons that resonate because you already have learned them, and the ones still to come. I am so in love with this book!

About the Book

In HUNDRED, the simple pleasures and hard lessons of each age are gorgeously presented as a full color, illustrated journey of the passage of time.

What did you learn in life? At age 3? At 21? What about 45? 65? 80 and beyond? How can you share this wisdom with the people you love?

Your first smile, kiss, true love. The breakthroughs that come with age and experience. The realizations we have about ourselves and the world as the number of candles on your cake creeps up.

There is so much to learn. In this beautiful fully illustrated book, you’ll follow, page by page, year by year, the course of a lifetime as each of us learns the little things that together make up a whole life.

A perfect gift for holidays, birthdays, graduations, and that special friend, HUNDRED, like Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go, is a book destined to become a perennial favorite.

Reflection

The book begins at 0, and there are much more than 100 pages. Sometimes you get a 6^th lesson followed by 6 and one quarter. Each little quip makes you think.

It starts with the simplest take on life and how to live a fulfilled life at 0: “You smile for the first time in your life, and other people will smile back at you.” How is this a lesson we forget as we grow older? That really, it isn’t so hard as we think to form those human connections and to reach other people.

The illustrations are as beautiful as the life lessons. Simple, colorful, and showing so much in a few simple brushstrokes. I loved the simplicity of this book, and I can imagine having it out on a coffee table or a shelf, where guests and loved ones will pick it up time and again. Maybe only reading a page or two, but feeling a connection all the same.

I highly recommend this for gifts! I know I’ll be getting it for a few loved ones myself this year!

Thank you to Celadon Books for my copy. Opinions are my own.

About the Author and Illustrator

HEIKE FALLER is an editor at the Zeit magazine in Germany. Hundred is her first book published in the United States.

VALERIO VIDALI is an Italian illustrator who lives in Berlin. His work has received many awards, and two of his books have been selected by the New York Times for Best Illustrated Books, in 2013 for Jemmy Button and in 2018 for The Forest.