Hope for the Flowers

By Trina Paulus

Hope’s theme of life, moving through seeming death to a new and more beautiful life, has touched the hearts of millions of people. Hope for the Flowers is for young and old, lovers, husbands and wives. It’s a book to learn to read with, or to comfort those who are dying or grieving. In the tale, the caterpillar heroes, Stripe and yellow, want something more from life than eating and growing bigger. They get caught up in a “caterpiallar pillar,” a squirming mass of bodies, each determined to reach a top so far away it can’t be seen. Finally disillusioned, they discover that the way for the caterpillars to find their particular “more,” who they really are, is to enter the cocoon and “.risk for the butterfly.” Hope for the Flowers has helped people gain the courage to leave jobs, change their lives and explore their love for another human being.

You can read this book in about 15-20 minutes. It’s heavy on the illustration, an allegory for anybody who is looking for a purpose, or ‘more’ to their life. It was a sweet little story that has a lot of life applications, some of which left me a little confused in the ambiguousness that ensued. Was it saying that “love is all you need” or was it saying that you should wait for the answers to fall from the sky? I liked some of the morals that were in this, but some just seemed…off. I could tell that this book was written in a certain era, and the morals come from that time and culture. That was the stuff that was throwing me off. It was a cute read. If you find it take a second and read it. I wouldn’t go out of my way to read it, and I think there are better gifts to give for a motivational or inspirational story for someone.

I give it a 3 out of 5