While it may seem obvi­ous that mate­r­i­al wealth does not bring hap­pi­ness, an author of the Pirkei Avot believed that an explic­it warn­ing was need­ed. Haya Shen­hav and Yir­mi Pinkus’s 100 Rooms expands on this trac­tate of the Mish­nah, turn­ing the con­cept of ​“the more pos­ses­sions, the more wor­ry” into an enchant­i­ng­ly fun­ny pic­ture book about one home­own­er who learns his les­son the hard way. Every room in his over­built home becomes a com­pli­cat­ed obsta­cle to con­tent­ment. Even­tu­al­ly, he learns that rec­og­niz­ing what one tru­ly needs is a bet­ter way to live.

When the book opens, an unnamed man demands that a builder con­struct a house for him. The result­ing house is too small for some­one who is appar­ent­ly nev­er sat­is­fied. As he insists on more and more rooms, the ini­tial­ly mod­est house becomes a palace. Yet although his dwelling keeps grow­ing, he him­self does not: ​“But the man wasn’t a king. He was just a man.” At first it seems unlike­ly that the greedy man will real­ize his mis­take. After all, he des­per­ate­ly tries to find a use for each of the one hun­dred rooms. Ded­i­cat­ing one to plates and anoth­er to forks cer­tain­ly does not make sense; his whole enter­prise is ridiculous.

Shenhav’s straight­for­ward lan­guage echoes the tone and moral clar­i­ty of fairy tales, and Pinkus’s illus­tra­tions are the per­fect coun­ter­part to the text. Both words and images con­vey the con­tra­dic­tion of wealth and emptiness.

Reach­ing the final room, the man is bereft. A sad fig­ure with red pants and tufts of clown-like red hair, he is at a com­plete loss. ​“Now I will eat some­thing, and after that I will go to sleep,” he tells him­self, only to find that the sim­plest tasks have become impos­si­ble. The hun­dredth room is com­plete­ly bare except for a hang­ing light illu­mi­nat­ing nothing.

A moment of real­iza­tion leads to change. The man looks in a mir­ror and sees him­self as he real­ly is: ​“dirty, tired, and frus­trat­ed.” And com­pared to his depress­ing home, the out­doors looks won­der­ful. The man notices a chick­en hap­pi­ly reclin­ing in a ham­mock and knows it is time to reverse course. Rather than aban­don­ing his goods, he decides to sell them at an afford­able price. Soon his neigh­bors are cheer­ful­ly cart­ing away fur­ni­ture and house­plants. As the author’s after­word reminds us, rela­tion­ships mat­ter more than accu­mu­lat­ed stuff.