Although it may have the appearance of a children’s book, “The Little Kid with the Big Green Hand” is a beautiful read with an important message for anyone of all ages: every part of you, even the ones you try to hide from the world, are beautiful and should be shown to the world.
In the book, a little girl named Lenore is born with a BIG green hand. She has a strong distaste for this part of herself and decides to hide it from the world, covering it with a scarf and learning to function only using her other hand.
This was until her family moved to Michigan where Lenore would begin experiencing even greater anxiety about beginning a new school with her BIG green hand. The anxiety got so bad, in fact, she struggled to sleep the night before school, resulting in her tightening the scarf around her hand way tighter than before.
It was at that moment Lenore heard the sound – a silly voice which she couldn’t quite place. The hand began squealing that the scarf was “toooo tight.” This, naturally, shocked Lenore, as she never heard the hand talk before. A conversation struck between the hand, who has now been introduced as Chuck.
Chuck begins to tell the same story as Lenore but from his point of view. In this story, Chuck was embarrassed of the small pink blob that he was attached to. He tells of this journey he went on where he tried to escape this blob – across a rickety bridge, past confused dogs, up a steep ravine, but no matter how hard Chuck tried, he couldn’t escape the small pink blob.
As he was sitting at the top of this steep ravine, watching the sunrise for the first time in his life, he came to an epiphany. He noticed that the world behind the scarf was in so much color and the sun was providing color and life to everything around them. He began to truly realize the beauty in the world he hadn’t seen before. It was during this time he discovered that it wasn’t just some small pink blob – it was a person. It was with this discovery that he came to love what he used to be insecure over.
After this discovery, Chuck tells Lenore “and even though we are different that doesn’t mean we don’t feel the same… and that we can’t be a part of each other’s beautiful story.”
Hearing Chuck’s story helped Lenore to understand this insecurity she tried to shield from the world was something beautiful. This story helped her grow as a person, finally being able to see the world in another’s point of view and realize we’re all connected.
The story ends with Lenore arriving on her first day at her new school, no scarf on her hand, ready to face the world.
The book may not seem like much – it’s childlike art-style and writing techniques don’t make it necessarily appealing to every audience, especially college aged students. But that’s what makes the book so amazing. It’s the perfect message needed for my peers.
College is a confusing time where we can find it easy to hide away the parts we don’t like about ourselves. As we’re entering a new place with new people, we try to impress these people we meet, hoping they’ll be our new, possibly life-long friends. Learning to love and show the world the parts of yourself you feel are flaws is hard during these times. Knowing that every part of you is perfect and deserves to be shown is the perfect message for students to hear.
And it wasn’t just this message that separated this book from others like it. Author Matthew Gray Gubler spread the message of this book through pure kindness. With the launch of the book, he announced a tour in which he drove a bright green Volkswagen Beetle with a giant hand on top of it and tons of books loaded inside. He randomly dropped in places giving free signed books and meeting fans.
He made a few selected stops on this tour too, including the University Medical Center Children’s Hospital in Nevada, his old highschool is Las Vegas, and a bookshop in New Jersey.
He also converted 90’s Kids Closet on Magazine street in New Orleans to a “just one book bookshop” where fans, many of which were Loyola students, got the chance to meet him and get a copy of his book the day of its official release. He was kind to each fan, even after being there for hours on end, giving hugs, conversing, and taking photos with anyone who entered. He also told everyone to take as many copies of the book as they pleased as they were all free.
Gubler’s kind personality truly made this book so much more meaningful. He isn’t just saying these words; he’s living them. It’s truly a beautiful message from a kind man.
“The Little Kid with the Big Green Hand” is available for purchase online and at most bookstores.
