The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse
by Charlie Mackesy

Andrea McLean

This month’s Book Club offering is a little different to anything I have brought you so far, but it is one of my absolute favourites. When I was in my 20s, as a young woman living away from home, I discovered the joys of Winnie The Pooh. Obviously I already knew about the little yellow bear with the big love of honey, but I had never read his stories through the eyes of an adult. I found them incredibly inspiring and I kept them right into adulthood.

I carried on reading Winnie the Pooh’s musings until I was in my 30s, then life and all its busyness got in the way. And if you’re thinking, “I am a grown woman, what the hell has Winnie the Pooh got to say to me?!” I’d say, everything. You just haven’t noticed that those little sayings you have dotted around your house on cute signs and fridge magnets actually come from a little bear. The saying: “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think…” came from one of those little books. 

It has been a long time since an illustrated book has captured my heart and imagination in the way that those books did, but the book I’m offering you here has done just that. The pictures are beautiful, the prose is wonderful in its simplicity and directness. 

This time around, the words of wisdom come from the heart, mind and incredible artistry of Charlie Mackesy in the form of a beautiful book called ‘The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse’. Charlie has produced artistic work for a huge variety of places; from on-set drawings of the film ‘Love Actually’ so they could be auctioned for Comic Relief, to hospitals, prisons and women’s safe houses around the world. His pictures combined with simple, profound wording speak to your soul and remind you of all that is good in the world, at a time when it is so easy to become fixated by the bad.

I can barely put into words how much I love this book. I hope you love it too.