by Oleksandr Shatokhin
Red Comet Press
2022
72 pages
ISBN: 9781636550640
From Ukrainian artist Oledsandr Shatokhin this beautifully imagined wordless picture book captures the story of home and war from a child's perspective. Evocative, compelling, heart-breaking, Yellow Butterfly is an inspirational story of hope conquering despair.
Images of barbed wire, burned out holes, and destroyed neighborhoods give way to first a yellow butterfly, then a few more, until finally a kaleidoscope (yes, a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope) of butterflies becomes the child's wings lifting her above the destruction up to the sun, to hope, to peace and to the future.
The colors at the beginning of the book are gray, white and black. The two page spread showing the wings unfurling behind the child is glorious yellow.
Yellow Butterfly is the best children's book about the desolation and destruction of war, yet it manages to handle the topic in a way child readers can understand and empathize with the plight of the Ukrainian people.
Ages 4 and up.
No comments:
Post a Comment