Yellow Butterfly

November 21, 2022
Via an emotionally tinged arc that moves from darkness to light, Ukrainian creator Shatokhin offers a visual prospect of a time when “yellow butterflies will flutter freely in free Ukraine.” Threatening, nightmarish images in black-and-white begin this wordless work. Initial pages show lines of barbed wire alongside the silhouette of a solitary light-skinned child, obscuring the youth’s eyes; a large spider appears amid the barbs and gives chase, and the child trips over a rock. Soon, though, a single glowing yellow butterfly emerges, and over ensuing spreads that feature war-torn backgrounds, the child follows its meanderings. Starkly rendered, scribbly images juxtapose scenes of war with glimpses of the natural world, portray the child’s reactions, and show the butterfly multiplying across various landscapes—a dark crater appears in one, children enjoy a playground in another. Eventually, patches of blue sky appear, swarming with yellow butterflies that form wings for the child as well as dismantle the barbed wire of the book’s initial pages. A final spread depicts pale figures gazing at a blue and yellow horizon that mimics Ukraine’s flag. Guidelines for sharing a wordless book with young readers conclude this unflinching response to current events from the perspective of a single child. Ages 4–8.

January 1, 2023
A Ukrainian author-illustrator shares a powerful wordless story about a child's ability to process emotion and find courage amid the devastation of war. Blacks and grays dominate the somber early pages. A child surrounded by barbed wire is terrified as the wire seems to become an enormous spider. She runs away, trips on a rock, and falls. While looking up, she sees a butterfly. This spot of yellow, the only bright color after sixteen pages of black, gray, and white, allows for the possibility of change. Shatokhin builds on that feeling by having the girl follow the butterfly past silhouetted figures in scenes of despair, representing all she's lost. Facing that loss unleashes her anger, and she rages, beating her fists against what turns out to be a bomb. The one butterfly becomes two, then four, the kaleidoscope gradually increasing until the dark no longer overwhelms each page. With yellow surrounding her, the child begins to see glimpses of blue sky. The barbed wire is replaced by butterflies, and in a final spread, people of all ages face a cloud of yellow below a bright blue sky, recalling the Ukrainian flag. While this is Shatokhin's personal response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is also a way to help children wrestle with the ruin and fear of war and bear witness to the resilience of those living through it. Maeve Visser Knoth

(Copyright 2023 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

January 1, 2023
A Ukrainian author-illustrator shares a powerful wordless story about a child's ability to process emotion and find courage amid the devastation of war. Blacks and grays dominate the somber early pages. A child surrounded by barbed wire is terrified as the wire seems to become an enormous spider. She runs away, trips on a rock, and falls. While looking up, she sees a butterfly. This spot of yellow, the only bright color after sixteen pages of black, gray, and white, allows for the possibility of change. Shatokhin builds on that feeling by having the girl follow the butterfly past silhouetted figures in scenes of despair, representing all she's lost. Facing that loss unleashes her anger, and she rages, beating her fists against what turns out to be a bomb. The one butterfly becomes two, then four, the kaleidoscope gradually increasing until the dark no longer overwhelms each page. With yellow surrounding her, the child begins to see glimpses of blue sky. The barbed wire is replaced by butterflies, and in a final spread, people of all ages face a cloud of yellow below a bright blue sky, recalling the Ukrainian flag. While this is Shatokhin's personal response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is also a way to help children wrestle with the ruin and fear of war and bear witness to the resilience of those living through it.

(Copyright 2023 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

Starred review from November 1, 2022
Responding to the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukrainian artist Shatokhin's wordless narrative offers a child's-eye view of military conflict. The story opens in black and white with a close-up that may be hard to identify at first: a single barbed-wire knot. Things clear up as the view pans to an outline of a child behind the fence, two knots hiding their eyes. The fence transforms into a menacing spider, and the child runs, trips, and falls. When they peer through their fingers, a single yellow butterfly has appeared. There is much for readers to interpret through conversations and multiple readings in these artfully designed pages, some with insets that focus attention, others with objects on facing pages that invite comparison, e.g., a missile and a tree jutting from the ground at similar angles. Several yellow butterflies flit above a bombed-out hole, and the child envisions a playground (past or future?) with happy friends; these images are formed with a minimum of lines against the white background. Shatokhin employs color, scale, perspective, and pattern to great effect in timely--and timeless--scenes that capture the protagonist's fear, fury, frustration, and, ultimately, hope. Exquisite compositions depict a yellow swarm of butterflies becoming the child's wings, lifting them to see a blue sky amid the destruction (yellow and blue being the colors of the Ukrainian flag). Useful backmatter includes information on sharing wordless books and discussing war with children. The child and other people portrayed are the white of the page. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Provocative, powerful, breathtakingly beautiful. (Picture book. 5-12)

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from January 1, 2023
Grades 1-4 *Starred Review* Hope is a yellow butterfly in this wordless picture book from Ukraine. The arresting story begins with the image of a girl staring at the reader through a barbed wire fence. Part of the fence then turns into a giant menacing spider. Frightened, the girl runs, trips and falls. When she opens her eyes, she sees a brilliant yellow butterfly, the only color thus far in a bleak, black-and-white world. Intrigued, the girl follows the butterfly's flight through a war-torn landscape. The mood darkens as she comes across a giant bomb, its nose buried in the ground. She angrily pounds on it with her fists until a cluster of yellow wings lifts it away, unleashing a veritable explosion of butterflies that wraps itself around the girl, forming giant wings. A light-filled blue sky then begins to emerge from the darkness as, ultimately, the story returns to the barbed wire fence, which the butterflies dismantle. Before reading this book, adults may want to consult its appended notes on sharing wordless stories and discussing the topic of war with children. Even if young readers don't fully grasp the events playing out on the page, they will connect with the emotion coursing through its apposite Expressionist illustrations. This moving story is both timely and timeless, evoking war and its aftermath without losing sight of hope.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2023

K-Gr 4-Shatokhin, a Ukrainian artist, wordlessly shares a message of hope and perseverance amidst devastation. A powerful opening shows shades of charcoal black, revealing themselves through a widening perspective to be rows of barbed wire. Among these a child discovers a yellow butterfly, the first appearance of color into the book. Together they visit the sites of war: a crater where a playground once stood, a missile in place of a tree. The child's grief and anger overwhelm her. As she shoves the missile out of the earth, a spray of butterflies erupts from the hole and fills the sky. Now sky blue and yellow (the shades of the national flag) wash across the pages in a prophecy of what is yet to come when the war is over. This culminates in the mass of butterflies breaking the barbed wire and transforming into the shape of a stork, the national bird of Ukraine. The illustrations are striking, depicting the lifelessness of a land ravaged by war, until it blossoms into a burst of color, the swarm of butterflies seeming to rise off the page. The child is paper-white and often shown in silhouette. To supplement the somewhat abstract visual story, a brief author's note speaks of faith and hope for the restoration of normalcy in Ukraine. Additional back matter offers practical suggestions for sharing a wordless picture book and slightly less useful advice for giving children "facts and context that is age-appropriate" without providing any such context. Without this, some adults may struggle to provide adequate scaffolding to the powerful illustrations. VERDICT A beautiful and heartbreaking tribute to the resiliency of people in wartime; with support from adults, children will gain perspective on the need for hope under hardship.-Clara Hendricks

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