We Wrote a Book with Pope Francis

In 2017, a most unlikely book went climbing up the lists of top sellers. Dear Pope Francis: The Pope Answers Letters from Children Around the World was precisely what its title promised, a children’s book in which the late Pope Francis responded to correspondence submitted by students attending Jesuit schools. The Pope answered letters from young people about everything from the nature of faith and mercy to why parents argue so much. The book, hailed by critics for Francis’s sensitive and respectful approach to communicating with children, wound up a New York Times bestseller, and was said to have been a fun and rewarding experience for the Pope.

Given that success, it was understandable that there would be interest in a follow-up project. But this time, Loyola Press, the nonprofit Jesuit publishing company behind Dear Pope Francis, wanted to try something new. In 2022, Loyola and the team at the Vatican began discussing ideas for a more traditional children’s book, one with a story and illustrations that could speak to kids in a different way. Loyola Press President and Publisher Joellyn Cicciarelli told the Vatican that she knew exactly the people to talk with.

“Then Joellyn called us up,” recalled Paul A. Reynolds ’82, a Boston College adjunct professor who runs a successful media production company and is also the author of a number of children’s books. “She basically said, ‘How would you like to do a children’s book with the Pope?’”

“So,” said Reynolds’s twin brother Peter H. Reynolds, the renowned illustrator of a large number of beloved children’s books, “it took us about three nanoseconds to say, ‘Yes, absolutely!’” 

In January, Loyola published Our Treasures Within, by Pope Francis and the Reynolds brothers. Released less than a year after Francis’s passing, the book is a poignant tribute to the joy he found in helping children live and grow in the world.

Like Dear Pope Francis, the new book was inspired by the Pope’s communications with young people. The central themes of Our Treasures Within grew out of a 2015 online gathering in which Francis talked with kids from around the globe. God has given each of us treasures, he told the children—things like kindness, creativity, and love—and our job is to share those treasures with the world. The book develops that idea over forty vividly illustrated pages, and it includes a message from the Pope. “What I want to say,” he writes, “is don’t hide the treasure that all of you have.”

Cicciarelli’s confidence that the Reynolds brothers were right for the book grew out of working with their media production company, FableVision, on a few projects through the years. The company works with organizations such as PBS Kids, Smithsonian, and the Library of Congress to produce books, games, videos, apps, and other multimedia tools that are typically focused on developing creativity and learning in young people. In one project for Loyola, for example, they developed the interactive game Wanderlight: A Pilgrim’s Adventure to teach Catholic formation in an engaging way. 

Adding to the appeal, no doubt, was that Peter H. Reynolds has illustrated more than eighty books that collectively have sold tens of millions of copies and been published in more than twenty languages. Among his legendary works are the Judy Moody series, its spinoff Stink series, and The Dot, which Peter wrote and illustrated, and which has inspired a popular international day of creativity. Peter and Paul were raised Catholic, and they each credit Jesuit mentorship for contributing to their success, so they were eager to work on a book with the Vatican. But there was one potential problem. Peter was contractually obligated to release books exclusively with his publisher, Scholastic.

Could an exception be made? Peter called his editor at Scholastic to find out. He explained that he had a chance to work on a book with a very special collaborator.

“Can I ask who it is?” she inquired.

“It’s Pope Francis,” he replied.

“Peter, my heart just skipped a beat. You have to do this. This is a singular moment.”

In December, a few weeks before Our Treasures Within was released, I met with the Reynolds brothers at The Blue Bunny, the bookstore they run in Dedham, Massachusetts. The shop is owned by Peter, but as with just about everything else with them, it can be difficult to keep track of where one brother ends and the other begins. Paul and Peter are cofounders of FableVision, book collaborators, sounding boards for their various other creative projects, and, as identical twins, spitting images of each other. 

When I arrived, Paul gave me a tour of the store, which was bustling with Christmas shoppers. “So this is the wall of Peter Reynolds,” he said with a laugh, waving his hand to indicate a section of shelves filled with popular books that his brother has worked on. “There are a few with my name on them as well,” he said with self-deprecating warmth. He showed me the Sydney & Simon series of three books that he wrote and Peter illustrated. “It’s a series about twin mice who love problems, because they get to use their art and creativity to solve them,” he said. His favorite book in the series, he said, is Sydney & Simon Go Green!, in which the mice siblings help a sea turtle that’s become sick after eating plastic in the ocean. “It underscores our particular focus on what creativity is there for,” he explained. “We want people to cultivate creativity to some positive and purposeful end. We hope that each book has a little nugget of wisdom that words and pictures can help people connect to.”

At the rear of the store, Peter was sitting at a small table across from a café counter where baristas were preparing coffees. Peter can often be found at the table, signing copies of his books for sale in the store and chatting with fans who travel to The Blue Bunny to meet him. As Paul and I approached, Peter was talking to a young boy named Leo and his mother who had come to the store to say hello to him. Leo handed him a book. Peter signed the book and then handed the boy his pen. “You can write your name here, too,” he said. “Write ‘Leo.’”

“Is somebody named Leo?” Paul asked, leaning in.

“This is Leo,” Peter responded.

“Oh my goodness, Leo, it’s so good to meet you. My name is Paul.”

“His dad’s name is also Paul,” Peter said.

“Is that right? Wow. We are cosmically connected.”

“This book is a gift from us and Leo’s mother,” Peter said, turning his attention back to the boy. “You can write your name there or wherever you want on the page.”

Paul and Peter are two of their parents’ five children. When the twins were three, the family moved from Toronto to Massachusetts, where the brothers grew up in the town of Chelmsford. In 1978, they each enrolled at Fitchburg State College (today University). The following year, Paul transferred to Boston College at the urging of John Bonowitz, SJ, a Jesuit that the boys had known and remained close with since he was a counselor at a summer camp they attended as children. Paul studied communications at BC, graduating in 1982, while Peter, who also studied communications, graduated from Fitchburg State in 1983.

For the next decade and a half, they worked at different organizations with similar missions. Paul was a partner at Cosmic Blender, a company that used media, storytelling, and technology to support corporate clients, while Peter, working at Tom Snyder Productions, helped to provide many of the same services to support teachers and schools. Each week, they would meet for lunch at the Taco Bell in the Watertown Mall—“which we could afford,” Paul said. “We could afford a bean burrito.” Finally, they decided to work together, and FableVision was founded in 1996.

“Having a twin, it’s like pistons,” Peter said. “If one goes up, one goes down—there’s the cheering each other on, the encouraging each other—”

“I love that word ‘encourage,’” Paul said, jumping in to complete his brother’s thought. “It’s from the French word for heart, coeur, and it’s like to put heart in you. It’s like, I’m going to put courage in you when you think you can’t do it. And I think we have that.”

With Scholastic signing off on Peter’s involvement in the new Pope Francis book, the Reynolds brothers began to workshop concepts in 2022. The Vatican sent along a few ideas for something based upon the stories that Francis often told children. It was a promising start, but how best to turn it into a book?

“We always say that a project will work if we can find the story,” Paul said, “if we can find a way in that feels authentic. So Peter and I were going back and forth and doing our musings about ideas together.” The project was moving at the leisurely pace that creativity can sometimes demand, but suddenly took on a new urgency when Pope Francis was hospitalized for thirty-eight days beginning in February 2025. Though Francis was eventually released from the hospital and able to resume many of his duties, there were concerns for his long-term health.

“It was a difficult time, and we realized that we’d better hurry if we were going to be able to complete this project with him,” Peter recalled. At that point, the brothers turned their attention to the Pope’s 2015 online gathering with children. What if the treasures he described back then were stored in gift boxes? The characters in the book would share their treasures with the world, as Francis had advocated, by opening their gift boxes. “I did some illustrations, some quick little thumbnails,” Peter said. “I showed Paul, and he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s it.’”

The brothers sent an overview of the story idea and some illustration comps to the Vatican. They soon heard back that the Pope had approved the concept. They were at work on the book when Francis passed away in April 2025, about a month after his release from the hospital. That left them mourning the passing of a man they greatly admired. They also wondered whether the book they were creating with him would still be published. Before long, though, the Vatican decided that the project, with its celebration of the Pope’s message to children, should move forward.

Suddenly, the pace became furious. Publication was set for the following January, which meant the brothers had about two months to pull everything together on their end of the project. “It was fast. It was so fast,” Peter said. “And that’s one of the reasons why I feel like this was a meant-to-be project, because it flowed out of us so fast. Sometimes, you can spend years on a book project. This flowed out.”

Our Treasures Within is off to a fine start, Paul told me, reaching number forty-nine in Amazon’s “children’s values” category. Loyola Press has a small marketing budget, he pointed out, “so word of mouth has been, and will be, key to keep pushing it up the list. Getting to work on this project is just shy of a miracle,” he continued. “Peter and I are very proud to say that we were a part of this. For us, it does feel like this is part of our calling. We’re doing the Lord’s work. This is the ministry.” ◽