Is there a name for this kind of genre – The Man who climbed out of a window, and the like? They’re sort of grown up picture stories, without the pictures. Not fairy tales, something else. I’m sure someone knows.

Anyway, this one’s just lovely: grumpy old widower who spends his days patrolling the neighbourhood and telling people off, wants to kill himself. Instead, he has his life turned upside down by the ‘foreigners’ that move in next door. In the end, it turns out that grumpy old man can actually teach us all something about what it means to be a part of a community, and to ‘love your neighbour’.

That makes it sound like a simplistic, dull story. It is simple, but it is beautiful and very much worth a read.