The Mosaic

“The Mosaic explores emotional resilience and connects it to the power that art has to express and make sense of our world and ultimately bring about healing.”  
- Books+Publishing
“In a picture book with winsome art, the narrative sensitively portrays family troubles as they impact a young child. The illustrations acknowledge Frankie’s father’s departure, but the story revolves around her reactions to the broken vase, her memories of happy times with family members, and her growing recognition that what initially seems sad might become a reliable, reassuring new normal.”
- Booklist
“Deborah Kelly’s moving metaphor comparing a shattered family to a mosaic will bring comfort to children aged four to eight who are coming to terms with parental separation. The Mosaic reassures readers that every family is perfect in its own way – even if the people have been rearranged into a new reality. Sometimes, when a fractured life imitates art, something precious is created with the pieces.”
- Buzz Words Magazine
“Addresses family dynamics, coping with change, and of course creativity and art. Finding the beauty of life within its wrappings of discomfort and discord is not easy for the best of us, let alone children grappling with disruptions to their normal. The Mosaic helps us find and appreciate that beauty in a myriad of joy-filled ways..”
- Kids’ Book Review  
“This is an important, powerful book and vital tool to explain separation to young children.”
-Kat BookWorm (via Instagram)
“Deb has taken this very delicate topic of separation or divorce and written a beautiful, poignant, and hopeful story/ Nicky has layered it with her gorgeous illustrations. The whole thing just speaks to healing and finding a new normal and the beauty that can come from change”
- Middle Grade Mavens podcast  
“This is a sensitive, original story that offers (readers) hope as they come to realise that while things are shattered, they can be put back together again, although it will be a new thing and it will take time for the arrangement to work out and the glue to dry”
- The Bottom Self  
“Use it not only with someone going through family separations and divorce, but also through other changes, like moves, an illness, a new job. Check out this hope-filled newcomer; I think it'll capture your heart like it has mine.”
- The Corner on Character, blog review