The Rare, Tiny Flower

This timely and timeless tale by Kitty O’Meara, like her best-selling book about the pandemic, And the People Stayed Home, offers wisdom relevant to difficult current situations and provides hope for resolution and growth.

The Rare, Tiny Flower is a beautifully produced picture book that explores themes of difference, divisiveness, tolerance, and unity as well as the agency of children through a thoughtful parable told in rhyming verse and accompanied by deeply felt illustrations.

This rhyming poem features a mysterious flower in the midst of a forest that appears as a different color to each viewer, which leads to escalating strife as everyone insists that their vision is “right.” World leaders and even botanists are unable to agree on the nature of the flower, and declare war as a way to resolve the conflict. It takes the vision and bravery of a young girl to point out that the flower is, in fact, quite multi-dimensional. Remarkably, she has the ability to be heard by the squabbling masses, who then see beyond their fighting and begin to rebuild bridges of communication and commit to connecting with one another and respecting varying points of view.

—

Kitty O’Meara lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, Phillip Hagedorn, their five rescue dogs, two cats, gardens, and books. Formerly a middle school writing and literature teacher and hospital and hospice chaplain, she is currently a spiritual director and has been a lifelong writer and artist. She has been called “the poet laureate of the pandemic” based on her wildly popular, widely circulated, and hopeful poem about the Covid-19 pandemic. That poem is illustrated and presented in book form in the bestselling And the People Stayed Home, published by Tra Publishing. She is also the author of The Rare, Tiny Flower (Tra Publishing, 2021).

Quim Torres is an award-winning illustrator and author based in Barcelona. He has illustrated several children’s books, including the recent Tra Publishing titles Sweet People Are Everywhere by Alice Walker and The Rare, Tiny Flower by Kitty O’Meara (both 2021). He has studied art as healing and Gestalt psychology, and he teaches workshops in which drawing becomes a means of self-discovery. He believes that people are made of stories, and he hopes his drawings inspire others to share their tales. He feels that art is a healing force.

—

Hardcover, $18.99, 40 pages, 9.25 x 12 inches, ISBN: 9781734761825, Age Range: 4-8