THE FIRST DAY OF PEACE

One brave act of kindness can be a catalyst for peace.

Mountain families and valley families live in a lush environment, surrounded by terraced farms and verdant meadows. They both depend on water for sustenance and survival, using it to grow crops, wash clothes, and more. But the changing climate causes the water level to rise and fall, wreaking havoc on this bucolic existence and causing strife. Neither group wants to help the other, preferring to guard their own precious resources. When severe floods put the valley people in a precarious situation, a mountain child insists that the mountain people step in and help their neighbors. This first step begins a cascade of subsequent acts of kindness that eventually restore peace. Using simple and somewhat didactic prose, Shuster and Soetoro-Ng present the lesson of the golden rule in, fittingly, the form of a parable. Gardel alternates between warm and cool palettes, depicting a racially diverse cast of people, and inserts motifs like the sun and the moon to emphasize the importance of nature to these people’s lives. Her style evokes traditional folktales, in which some people have recognizable facial features and others are only simple, colorful forms. The book would be an adequate starting point for curriculum units on compassion, service, and social emotional learning. The work closes with an afterword by Soetoro-Ng, co-founder of the Peace Studio, an organization that helps artists and journalists work toward social change. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An earnest, slightly preachy call to action to look after one another.