Wondering what your next book should be? I recommend I Don’t Like Stripes, a quick but powerful read, by Diane Roston, M.D.. Dr. Roston is our neighborhood psychiatrist who lives in Hanover, NH, helping people each day as a staff psychiatrist at West Central Behavioral Health and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. For those who know her, she’s a voluminous resource of knowledge. Now she’s published a slight paperback volume to help us better understand our eternal plight.
For kids, this is a fun and uplifting book that tells the story of how two birds, initially at odds with one another due to one being born with stripes and the other with spots, can ultimately achieve a lasting friendship despite their differing appearances. It’s filled with the kind of energy and emotion only kids can muster at play. A highlight and refreshing journey even for us adults who, of course, will find deeper messages here.
For adults, the several questions posed by this seemingly lighthearted children’s book are those of life, of differences, of equity and inequity, race, color, and the embedded notions of how looks can impact relationships. Still deeper is the message of conflict between and among those who are different by virtue of their physical characteristics. And, digging further, the notion of whether we will ever find peace without conflict.
Must there be war to achieve peace? Is fear of our differences an inherent character flaw in all of us? Must we have conflict to ultimately achieve connection with others? Or, conversely and more optimistically, shall we expect harmony after conflict? Will we eventually achieve peace across all of humankind? Is there hope for humanity?
In thirty brief, and highly colorful pages as illustrated by J. Moria Stephens, yet another local artist from here in the Upper Valley, Roston may have achieved what took Tolstoy more than 1,000 pages to chronicle. Is conflict our destiny as a species? Must we first do battle to achieve harmony with one another? This children’s book may be just what we need to understand the human condition. It’s a fun and potent read for children and adults as we look to the New Year with all it has to offer. I give it multiple thumbs up.
Thank you Dr. Roston for your clear, concise, and powerful book on life, on war and peace, and on how we might all come together to live as friends—spotted, striped, or otherwise demarcated by our inherent physical differences. We are, it seems, all birds of a similar feather. Perhaps that’s the life message we need to help us fly high, fly together, and fly happily along through life’s adventurous journey.
Dave Celone writes from Sharon, VT where he’s about to venture out into the new-fallen snow to add more sunflower seeds to his winter backyard bird feeder as a tribute to I Don’t Like Stripes!
Thank you, Dave, for alerting us to this new book. How timely the subject is! And Moria Stephens’ illustrations are always fun.