Diane Arkenstone’s tender picture book teaches about optimism, happiness and how to say goodbye when it’s time.

A girl lives in a modest house and tends a magnificent garden. She shares its bounty with birds and animals, who become her family. She loves watching the birds, with their many-colored feathers.

Going into town one day, “someone [tells] her very bad news of things in the world, of a war and death and many terrible and sad things.” Bad thoughts begin to creep in, and the girl soon becomes sick and weak. She finally realizes that what’s changed is her focus on bad things. Centering on the good, she lives a long, happy life and takes her last breath as an old woman surrounded by birds and animals, wrapped in a robe of rainbow feathers.

The book demonstrates the interconnectedness of people and nature. For example, ravens keep snails and bugs in check; swallows make nests from dead grass, and because the birds followed “her throughout the day… she never felt lonely.” Equally important, a positive attitude can impact the larger world: “And through [the girl’s] gentle love,” Arkenston writes, “many others began to see the beauty of the world too.”

This would be enough to carry the book, but the ambitious story ends by capturing the girl’s adult life in “photographs,” and she’s shown in a beautiful full-page illustration as an old lady, resting amid flowers and birds, then as a young girl again, her spirit rising above the Earth, which gently addresses the topic of death.

The vibrant art is wonderful—simple but eloquent. The array of colors is impressive, as are the varieties of birds, flowers and animals, all expertly illustrated. The writing is generally equal to the art, although while some sentences are gorgeously composed, a few can be long and clumsy.

Regardless, this is a beautiful, sensitive picture book—one that shows how to live a happy life in troubled times.