Collaborative learning is slowly emerging in Higher Education. However, it presents challenges in formal educational contexts as it requires networking, digital and social skills that students often lack. In informal education, on the other hand, collaboration and openness are often the norm. The Global Open Graduate Network (GO-GN) has been a successful initiative in developing a global community of researchers in open education. By offering a range of activities it has connected students and alumni members and facilitated self-forming working groups created around common research methodologies or topics of shared interest. The picture book team is an example of such a self-forming group. With a fellowship from the GO-GN, a group of open educators located all over the world came together to co-create a picture book story about open education. The story was written collaboratively during the pandemic exclusively using the open web and digital platforms. This contribution reports on the GO-GN picture book fellowship project and the collaborative experience of the team that has been working together since October 2020. Based on our personal and collective stories, experiences and milestones the presentation will focus on what we have learnt through this collaborative process about ourselves and others and through our reflective blogs. The aim of our individual and collective blogs was to reflect on the challenges and benefits to work collaboratively in such a complex setting but also on how this project has brought us joy and happiness and the role camaraderie, care and openness played in the way we have worked together during very challenging and worrying times. Using the framework proposed by Nascimbeni (2020), we reflected on data collection and management, intercultural digital competence, critical media literacy, ethical issues management and accessibility as well as on the values of open education that are portrayed in the picture book. With delegates we would like to discuss our project, get feedback and explore ways in which the open picture book could be used with young and more experienced readers of all ages around the world to share the values of open education more widely.