The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories has been all over the book blogs for the last few months. It looked adorable, and I kept waiting for a copy to show up in my library’s system. It never did, though, and so with some of my birthday money, I got myself a copy.

For anyone who might not have heard of this book, it’s a collection that pairs artwork and flash fiction. It is the first volume in what will eventually be three, from what I can tell. To give some examples of the stories within:

This was a really cute book. Some of the stories were funny, some touching, some bizarre, some sad, some eye-rolling. I didn’t realize before I got my own copy that there were multiple contributors, so that the artwork and writing styles would be different all throughout the book. That of course meant that I liked some better than others, but that wasn’t a bad thing. It felt like there was a good spread in here, and that most people could find something that appealed them.

I love the idea of pairing art and words. It’s why I started reading graphic novels a few years ago, and eventually discovered that the ones I really enjoyed were more like illustrated novels than comics. This is the first story collection I’ve read that was illustrated, and the first that focused on flash fiction. I love flash fiction as well, so you can see why the book particularly appealed to me.

It wasn’t perfect, and as with most story collections, if I read too many stories in a row, I stopped seeing individual beauty. It’s tempting to just read all 80-something pages in one go, and easy to do, but for me, it was better to read a small few, then set it aside, and pick the book up again later. To savor them.