The Happiness Star is a collection of six stand-alone stories written to comfort children about life after death. Each story features different children, but two entities, the Happiness Star and the Angel of Happiness, are common to all and guide the children through their ordeals, including visits to departed friends and loved ones.
In “The Traveling Blanket,” the Star and Angel transport sleeping siblings, Matthew and Lucy, to Africa to comfort two orphans. On arrival, the Star beams a ray of light that surrounds the orphans and touches them “at a Soul level.” Matthew and Lucy are used as “a channel…to bring comfort to these two children.”
In another story, three young girls play under a flowering bush, where they use their inner eyes to see the Happiness Star in the Heaven World. When one girl becomes sick and dies, the other two “see” her dancing in the aisles during her funeral service. The two friends regularly return to the bush, where they are spiritually transported into heaven to play and laugh with their deceased friend.
This is a spiritual look at death with a New Age sensibility. While aimed at children, its complex concepts are likely to be daunting to a young audience. Consider this passage about the African children’s difficult lives: “There was a Soul lesson which was being learnt [sic], even though it felt more like a crucifixion with no respite from the suffering. But out of this intense suffering their inner self was growing and developing…This silent growth could not be seen on the Earth plane, but it was being nurtured by the Angelic world.”
Author Christine Fox’s intent is well meaning, but children are likely to be more confused than comforted by the difficult concepts introduced here. Adding to the book’s challenges are typos, punctuation errors, and unusual capitalization of words. In addition, there is no table of contents, which is typically included in such collections.
Also available as an ebook.
