By Maureen Tai, 28 August 2018
“The notebook was full of Grandpa’s thoughts and sketches and answers to questions such as, ‘When I die, who will I become and what do I want to happen?'”
This quirky but remarkably endearing picture book is about a dead grandfather and his notebook and his grandson. The little boy discovers the notebook not long after the grandfather’s demise, and its pages are bursting with amusing, detailed doodles and light-hearted, anticipatory musings about the afterlife.
So death has come, as it does. Kono ato dou shichaou? What happens next indeed? Continue reading
It is hard to miss the copy of Akissi, laid out on the table at Daunt, a bookshop in London. The cover is a startling yellow and has a picture of a little girl the colour of warm cocoa, with an oversized head, large oval eyes and wide toothy grin. She lives with her mum and dad, older siblings Victorine and Fofana in a square, yellow brick house with blue shuttered windows in the Ivory Coast.
How does one review a wordless picture book, when the illustrator has already decided that words are insufficient, and ineffective in the storytelling? Do I say that in small things, the illustrations are achingly exquisite and hauntingly beautiful? Or that I felt, understood – to the core – and found familiar, the sadness, loneliness and depression experienced by the small boy in the story? Or that this is probably one of the most profound, and important, picture books on childhood anxiety that I have had the good fortune to discover? All true words, but strangely insufficient, and ineffective. To truly appreciate this wonderful picture book, you need to hold it in your hands and absorb every frame as you turn the pages. 
Stories That Stay With Us 