THE CIRCUS COMES TO THE VILLAGE

Following The Most Beautiful Village in the World (2018), Kobayashi offers a second picture book featuring Yamo, a boy who lives in a bucolic village in the Afghan mountains.

The opening spread depicts a scene of everyday village life: men gathered in a pavilion drinking tea, a street vendor, donkeys laden with cargo, boys playing simple games. But the arrival of the circus makes this day extraordinary, and an excited Yamo runs home with the news. Yamo and his friend Mirado, however, must work in the fields, harvesting wheat and yams. The following day they enjoy the circus, where the highlight for Mirado, whose father “went to the war,” is playing his father’s flute with the traditional instrumental band accompanying a “beautiful” singer. Mirado enchants the audience with his flute and is invited to join the circus, prompting Yamo to wistfully tell him that he may see his father as it travels. Yamo’s own future is significantly less hopeful, conveyed in an epilogue that brings the war home. The colorful, detailed illustrations have a nostalgic quality. Young readers/listeners will doubtlessly notice the simplicity of village life, with its low-tech pastimes and slower pace, and the tinge of melancholy is pervasive. While the minimalist text does not match the interest level of the illustrations, readers will be eager for the third volume, due in 2020, to see how events for Yamo and his community unfold.

A humanizing glimpse into Afghan culture