When a picture book leaps out at you, consumes all your senses & you simply fall in love with it. That.
The Yes from Sarah Bee and Satoshi Kitamura.
The Yes is a picture book filled with energy, warmth and such a feel good factor that’ll have you punching the air as you reach the end. I promise.
Let’s meet the Yes …
A ‘great big orange’, urm, figure (?) reminiscent of an elephant in my mind – but deliberately vague and wonderful. The yes leaves his ‘soft comfy nest’ to go ‘trundling out to see.’ He goes to The Where but is an ‘endless place full of Nos.’
‘There were Nos in the air, Nos by his feet, Nos in his fur,’
The Nos creep up when he wants to climb a tree, cross a bridge, and explore the woods. The Nos ‘rained down’ on him but they ‘were small’ and ‘the Yes was large.’
The Yes is a picture book about the voices that always say … no.
It is about that niggling doubting voice that prevents you from trying something a little bit new, a little bit strange by filling your mind with all sorts of excuses …
‘The Nos swarmed around the Yes in a thick cloud
of no and said all the nos there ever were.’
Sarah Bee’s narrative has a subtle alluring power, full of wonderfully quotable lines. She encourages the reader realise that those nos … well, they are just niggling doubts that need to be turned into YES.
The Yes
The illustrations from the hand of the award winning Satoshi Kitamura capture the quirkiness and individuality of Bee’s narrative wonderfully.
Who wouldn’t benefit from this picture book?? Sarah Bee’s narrative contains an addictive, empowering message of self belief.
Imbuing the word Yes with such energy this is wonderful to read out loud with everyone shouting ‘YES’ at the right moments. Too much fun!
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