YOU BE YOU
by Richard Brehm ; illustrated by Rogério Coelho
Faced with a blank canvas, a young girl finds her creative spirit in Brehm’s unusual picture book.
Emerging from a dark forest, a sickle moon overhead, a young girl enters “a whispery house / At the edge of the wild,” where mysterious “Old Master Paint” awaits her in a cape of luminous, swirling colors. Too tongue-tied and uncertain to say her name, the girl is given a bucket and a brush and led down strange hallways and upstairs to a room dominated by an enormous, white canvas—hers to paint, she is told. After a tentative, disappointing first effort, the little girl’s anger and self-doubt—in the form of trolls, wolves, and her alter ego—threaten to get the better of her until she realizes that she is in control. It is her own life the girl is painting, and she can choose to “Dream large! Grab on! / You’re just getting started, / Such adventures to come!” The offbeat cadence of inspirational, rhyming, and almost-rhyming text winds through dreamlike images by award-winning Brazilian author/illustrator Coelho. Shadowed rooms (odd angles and haunting details), rich abstractions of patterns and color, and showers of light reflect the little girl’s initial hesitation to claim her place in the world and her subsequent, celebratory sense of self-discovery.
An uplifting, eye-filling adventure encouraging children to realize their innate creativity and individuality.