Vrolijk is Mies van Hout’s first picture book without outside involvement from another writer. Inspired by a children’s workshop where she experimented with oil pastels, she developed a new technique, which she then went on to use in her own picture book.

Real friends can laugh, have arguments and cry together, just as long as they trust each other. This universal fact is as old as time. And yet Mies van Hout has succeeded in making it the basis of a magnificent picture book.