How the Land of Sorrow Became the Land of Joy

📚AGES 6 TO 12    📄92 PAGES  ·  PAPERBACK    🌍SHIPS WORLDWIDE

Sneak-peak inside the book

Written by Swaady Martin Illustrated by Emmanuel O Nyakwada "Point Blank"

When a malevolent spell transforms the Land of Joy into the Land of Sorrow, a boy named Smile and his horse Moonbow set off on a quest to restore happiness and harmony. As our hero travels through the Shadow Forest — with only magic seeds to protect him — the Wicked Witch Brokenness sets him three terrifying tasks. Will Smile find a way to face his fears, triumph over adversity, and bring joy back to his homeland?

€20.50

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92-page illustrated paperback
Worldwide shipping available
Available in English

Order this book - €20.50

Print ISBN: 978-0-62-078421-4 · Ebook ISBN: 978-2-49-157306-5 · Size: 8.5" x 8.5" (216mm x 216mm) · Binding: Paperback perfect bound · Page Count: 92

FOR PARENTS

Reading this book
opens a conversation.

How the Land of Sorrow Became the Land of Joy is a full quest story with a hero, a villain, a forest of shadows, and three great tasks to overcome. It carries the emotional depth and narrative richness that older children are ready for, while keeping the wisdom light enough to land naturally through the story. The themes it opens — facing fear, moving through darkness toward joy, the psychology of the shadow — are among the most important conversations a parent can have with a child aged six to twelve.

Conversation Starters Themes

◇ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL THEMES

Courage and the willingness to face what frightens us · Overcoming emotional challenges by moving through them rather than around them · Resilience and the discovery that adversity can be survived and transformed · Joy as something worth fighting for and capable of being restored

◇ SPIRITUAL THEMES

◆ An introduction to the Jungian concept of "shadow" — the parts of ourselves we are afraid to face, and what happens when we do

◆The understanding that darkness is not the end of the story but part of the journey toward light

◇ CULTURAL THEMES

◆ Yugas — the Hindu cosmological concept of eras or epochs, describing the cycles of time through which worlds pass from harmony into darkness and back into light

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Swaady Martin

I first wrote this story at sixteen, in French — my first complete book, written in my teenage years. It sat with me for almost twenty-five years, including the original illustrations I had drawn myself, before I finally returned to it, rewrote it, and brought it to publication. The conviction that drew me to it then is the same one that brought me back: that nothing is set, that we carry the capacity to transform sorrow into joy, and that joy is always findable — not despite the challenges of life, but through them and within them.

Meet the author

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Emmanuel O Nyakwada

NAIROBI, KENYA

Emmanuel O Nyakwada, known as "Point Blank," is a Kenyan illustrator and digital artist whose work spans storybooks, animation, and visual storytelling across national and international clients. He and Swaady share a creative history that began fifteen years ago, when she commissioned his very first watercolor work. This book marks his return — now working in digital painting, bringing the Land of Joy to life with a technique he had never attempted before. He describes every page as a labor of love.