The Girl With 5 Hearts, written and illustrated by Chastidy and Matthew Ronan (OeO Books).
When Chastidy Ronan worked as a nanny, she made up a story to tell her young charge. She and her husband, Matthew, talked about turning the story into a picture book, and Matthew even began some pencil sketches of possible illustrations.
Now, several years after Chastidy’s death from colon cancer, Matthew has completed their dream of creating a book about The Girl With 5 Hearts.
It’s a picture book parable with a universal message, reminiscent in tone to I’ll Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. A girl with five hearts gives them one by one to people and causes she loves, only to have her heart rejected and broken.
The story is painfully honest yet hopeful, because in the end the girl gives her hearts back to the One who made them and she is fully restored.
No stranger to heartbreak and loss, Chastidy took her inspiration for her story from her own life. The Girl With 5 Hearts will inspire both young and old and point toward healing even the deepest of wounds.