Hundred: What you learn in a lifetime by Heike Faller illustrated by Valerio Vidali

The Hundred book is like life itself. It is made up of 100 smaller lessons that you learn throughout life. It contains the big themes like love and death, friendship and happiness, fear and pain, hope and dreams.

"It does come with a jar of homemade blackberry jam."

I picked this amazing book up at a recent charity book sale. It's not a book I would add to a school library but I am happy to add to my own book collection. This book was first published in German (2018) with the title Kein und Aber. The English translation was published in 2019. Translation by Guenther A Krummings and Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp. 

Faller’s interviews revealed some moving truths about life, with those that had suffered hardship expressing surprise at their own strength, as well as observations that life has beauty even during challenging times. She also notes that interviewees that had gone through difficulties were more easily satisfied than people who’d experienced a less challenging path. ...  It makes for some endearing moments, such as falling in love at 17, or realising, at 30, that happiness is relative. Faller also incorporates some of the stories she’s heard from people in their latter years – for example the teacher that finally found a partner that suited her, at 74. It’s the book’s mix of playfulness and poignancy that makes it compelling, and even though some of the statements feel time-worn, Vidali’s illustrations cast them in a new light. Creative Review

As the title says this book covers a lifetime. Every page is a different (chronological) age.

0 You smile for the first time in your life and other people smile back at you!

1/2 Everything within reach is yours to grab.

1 But if you let it go it falls down. You've discovered gravity.

and so we continue until we reach

6 You're a big kid now, going off to school with your friends. 

Jump ahead to 

12 There's a ton of stuff you're better at than your parents.

Watch this 2 minute video where you can see inside this book. Here is an interview with the author. And here is the trailer (well worth watching). Oh and you'll need to find and read this book to discover why I mentioned blackberry jam!

Here are some of my favourite words:

43 You've learned to be comfortable with being alone.

60 You're sixty now. As a child, sixty seemed ancient but you hardly feel old at all.

74 Finally, perhaps, you find your perfect match.

81 What if age wasn't counted in years but in moments we treasured?

97 People ask you all kinds of things, like: what has life taught you?

I suggest this a book for adult because there is a reference to Auschwitz (age 10).

Publisher blurb: How does our perception of the world change in the course of a lifetime? When Heike Faller's niece was born she began to wonder what we learn in life, and how we can talk about what we have learnt with those we love. And so she began to ask everyone she met, what did you learn in life? Out of the answers of children's writers and refugees, teenagers and artists, mothers and friends, came 99 lessons: that those who have had a difficult time appreciate the good moments more. That those who have had it easy find it harder getting old. That a lot of getting old is about accepting boundaries. And of course, as one 94 year old said to her, 'sometimes I feel like that little girl I once was, and I wonder if I have learned anything at all.' A bestseller in Germany, Hundred is a book given by children to grandparents and the other way around, for christenings and Mother's days, significant birthdays and times of celebration. With every age beautifully illustrated by Valerio Vidali, Hundred cannot simply be read because, like life itself, it must be experienced.

“I talked to elementary school kids and 90 year-olds; men and women who are much respected in our society as well as those who have lost their status,” writes Faller in the book. “I sat with the former director of an East German company (Kombinat) in his garden in a village behind the high-rise buildings of Marzahn, a neighbourhood in Berlin, and with a Syrian refugee family on the concrete floor of their basement apartment in Istanbul.” Heike Faller

9 America, Italy, Berlin, Cornwall, Torridon, the Mediterranean, 

Mount Everest, the North Pole, Russia, Australia. The world is gigantic and amazing!

17 The Impossible has happened. You've fallen in love.

Here are three other books illustrated by Valerio Vidali (the telephone one is amazing).