Thief

Every once in a while, I borrowed books with not-so-childish topics and read together with my daughter. Bereavement, refugees, divorce, whatever.

I know: that makes me sound like such a defensive pessimist. Or Charlie Brown. But hear me out.

The truth is, there are good lessons to learn from those tender story books written for children. My pick tonight is a story of daddy struggling with depression: The Colour Thief. One day, a thief stole all colours away. One by one, the colours were gone: the sky turned grey, the clouds frowned, the sun was sulking, or so it seemed. And on that sobering note, if the dad went out, the lamp posts would laugh at him or the streets would call him names.

Page by page, we saw the colours disappearing into dark shadows. An abyss. We got chance to talk about how depression can change us, and how we can change the depression. Fortunately, we're learning the life lessons from a picture book, and not from our real life.