Yellow Butterfly

 

Yellow Butterfly / Oleksander Shatokhin
Brooklyn, NY: Red Comet Press, 2023, c2022.
72 p.

This is a wordless picture book by an internally displaced Ukrainian artist, created in the first few months of the Russian invasion. It shows the realities of war and displacement, with black and white images of war and fear and barbed wire -- but with a yellow spark of a butterfly leading the isolated character through the pages, until it multiplies and grows, and in the final pages of the book we have a clear yellow and blue layout with hopeful figures standing together. The images are rough, with a lot of energy and movement in them. You can feel the unsettled atmosphere in the opening pages. But the conclusion has a joy and hope in it, which makes sense when you read the author's statement on the back cover -- that he believes Ukraine will prevail and that "yellow butterflies will flutter freely in free Ukraine".

If you haven't experienced many wordless picture books yet, there is also a helpful appendix included in this book. There is one page titled "Sharing a Wordless Picture Book" which gives tips on how to approach and engage with this kind of book, as well as how to share it with the children you're reading it with. It included lots of visual examination and imagination, and patience to let the images speak to you. Then there is a second page, "Guiding the Conversation", and that includes tips on engaging with the content of this book. It provides ideas to check in with children to make sure they understand, as well as listening to their reactions and providing room for conversation about tough topics. 

I think that these resources make this book way more useful for parents, teachers or anyone experiencing this kind of book, with this kind of heavy topic, for the first time. This is a book that could be used to better understand conflict and to open discussions on hard topics. Well worth checking out if it's available to you.