I love, love, love Oliver Jeffers’ work! I haven’t read a book by him that hasn’t made me think deeply about the world around me. This being said, young children might find his books boring or confusing, but an adult reading to them might interpret the story in a very different way. This is just the case with The Heart and the Bottle.

There is an interesting scene in this book that really threw me for a loop. A young child is exploring and comes upon an empty chair. The child realizes something about this chair, but the reader is never told what exactly, or what feelings the child is having. Something about this part of the book felt sad and somewhat sinister to me. I could tell there was some kind of a story behind it, but that Mr. Jeffers was leaving it up to the reader to decide how to interpret the message he laid out.

The most intriguing thing about this book is that any child that picks up this book will probably be very confused by this part of the story. And how will a parent or caregiver tell them what the story means, if they themselves don’t really know what is going on in the picture? I’ll leave that up to you to figure out, but I know that even if you don’t like the way this story goes, your heart will be content with the beautiful way Mr. Jeffers illustrates his book.

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language:  None

Violence/Gore:  A body organ is stuffed into a bottle, which may scare some young children.

Sex/Nudity: None

Mature Subject Matter:

None

Alcohol / Drug Use:

None