Review of "The Hermit's Hut" by Tuula Pere

Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)

Rarely has a book ever genuinely made us tear up and cry, but The Hermit's Hut by Tuula Pere is one of those rare, special books.

And what's incredible about that is how this isn't a book about war, poverty, refugees, or terminal illness, it's just a book about a guy: an author who is fed up with what he feels and what he experiences from the world around him.

And it's so hard for us not to sympathize and relate to him. Francis, the main character, is an author—a children's author—like us and many of the people we know and love. He is someone you can tell who puts his heart and soul into each and every one of his books, not for money or fame but because he genuinely wants his stories and characters to touch the hearts of people and change the world for the better. How can you not get behind that?

What's also relatable are the difficulties and obstacles he faces. He goes to the park to sit down and relax, and all he hears is bad news and negativity: people arguing, criticizing, and being mean to each other. And in his professional life, he feels like people have stopped caring (if they even cared to begin with). And people have stopped reading as well.

It's like everything he built his whole life and career around now amounts to nothing in a world of flashy new apps, technology, and multimedia. Where is the love for books? Where is the love for the written word? AI seems to write and solve every problem these days. What happened to us using our own minds? Solving our own problems? Creating our own unique things? Being individuals and independent thinkers? Feeling our own feelings and believing our own beliefs without being told what to feel and what to believe from a screen?

All of this comes crashing down as it dawns on Francis that the world he originally wrote books for is not a world that's familiar to him anymore.

And this resonated with us a lot. Maybe it'll resonate with you.
Maybe you've created something with the hopes that it would touch and change lives only to see it be overshadowed, overlooked, and disregarded.

In perhaps the book's most powerful page, Francis sees that people are no longer interested in his books. He receives one-star reviews that say things like his books are too boring, sad, or depressing, actually reflecting reviews that Tuula Pere received about more somber children's books like The Only Blue Crow.

Francis exclaims that "Children need to know what's going on in the world!... I write them with a gentle hand, even if the subject is heavy."

You can really tell that Francis's words, feelings, and experiences really come from Tuula Pere's own. Her books tend to explore darker, grimmer, sadder things, but always with a positive edge.

One of the most heartbreaking parts of this page is that people stopped buying Francis's books, they were put in discount bins, and they were eventually used as wastepaper.

But even more heartbreaking is that there's a character in Francis's book who is never given a name, but occurs enough on the page that we know this character means a lot to him: an walking apple. The Apple seems to be one of Francis's core characters and creations, representative of his creative vision. This was supposed to be his Mickey Mouse, but it's like no one cares about him anymore. And that's heartbreaking.

What's incredible is that this book doesn't insist that the written word and publishing is the only way to reach people. In the mountains with his friend, the goatherd Erasmus, he has time to do some soul searching and remembers that his grandmother used to knit things: socks, mittens, sweaters, gloves, etc., so he starts knitting things for people too.

He relates these knitted creations to the written word, saying, "Each knitted stitch is like a letter. Together the stitches form words and create patterns that tell stories." And they "warm the listener."

This is a beautiful children's book.

We also were really enamored with the illustrations by Nyamdor J Lkhaasuren. They reminded us of Europe! The way that things are a little slanted and a bit chaotic, yet very stylistically pleasing and colorful.

Check it out on Amazon!