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The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is authored and illustrated by Charlie Mackesy and published by Penguin Books.

The impression I had when I first flipped through the book was, "Oh, another illustrated book with feel-good life stories and philosophical quotes." It is a nice book not I did not expect this book to be that popular. When I looked online for more information, I found out it was on #1 New York Times Bestseller, Wall Street Journal Bestseller and USA Today Bestseller. It's totally unexpected.

This book has even more reviews than any single copy of Harry Potter. I just don't understand how that is possible. This book was published in 2019 and at the time of this review, it has over 74,000 reviews on Amazon. It's a nice book, I must say that again, but I don't understand the mass market appeal. It's incredible.

The story is about a boy, who met a mole, then a fox, and later a horse. It's about them hanging out in the countryside (you don't see other people) and talking about life, philosophy.

Below are some quotes from the book to give you a better sense of what this book is like:

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" "Kind" said the boy.

"If at first you don't succeed, have some cake."

"What do you think is the biggest waste of time?" "Comparing yourself to others." said the mole.

"One of our greatest freedom is how we react to things."

"Often the hardest person to forgive is yourself."

"Doing nothing with friends is never doing nothing, is it?"

"Everyone is a bit scared, but we are less scared together."

"Asking for help isn't giving up. It's refusing to give up."

"The greatest illusion is that life should be perfect."

The artworks are nice. They were loosely drawn with pen, ink and watercolour. The drawings have a children-book style to them. They also look like drafts or rough sketches for more polished illustrations. The style suits the subject matter. And all the text were handwritten.

There are 128-pages in this hardcover. You can go through this book under an hour.

It's a nice book but I still don't understand why it's so popular. Perhaps that's got to do with the fact that the author has 470,000 FB followers, 140,000 Twitter followers or 1.2 million Instagram followers. His huge following on Instagram could explain the popularity of this book. These philosophical thoughts and feel-good meaningful quotes work surprisingly well on Instagram.

I still can't get over the fact that this book has more reviews than Harry Potter. Wow.

This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | AU | JP | CN)

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