I Touched the Sun by Leah Hayes
Out of stock
Description
A young boy goes on a journey to meet the Sun and discovers his inner light, in this wondrous picture book debut from the NYT-Bestselling graphic novelist of Not Funny Ha-Ha.
His mother says it's too far away. His dad says it's too hot. And his brother says he has more important things to do. But none of this discourages a young boy from pursuing his plan: to fly up into the sky to touch the Sun, whose light always feels so nice on his skin. And so, off he goes, all by himself.
Warm and kindly, the Sun shows the boy the world from her perspective: her friends the clouds, the beaches upon which she shines down, the trees she's grown, the rainbows she creates. In return, the boy shares with her some of his dreams, fears, hopes, and uncertainties – complexities of the human condition that the Sun, as a cosmic force of constant light, has never experienced. In this way, the boy begins to understand somethingabout the pattern of light and shadow that makes up every human life.
And when it's time to part ways, the boy returns home to his family changed, with an inner light that reminds him that the cosmic force of the sun is in him, too, always, though darkness falls, though he sleeps and dreams, though doubts and fears and gloominess come, too.
'A tender parable about how to find and bear your inner light… Carrying the story is the quiet conversation between the black-and-white simplicity of Hayes’s pencil and the incandescent richness of her crayons, emanating the candor of a child’s drawing and the refined subtlety of an artist’s lens on the world — a world of contrasts in the act of being made on the page, like a young life still unwritten, yet to be colored in with living.' – Maria Popova, The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings)
'Hayes tells a tender, surreal story about a young child in awe of the sun’s warmth… The boy’s peculiar charcoal-gray world is brightened by the deliberate use of color, particularly the vibrant yellow of the sun. Hayes’s understated and unfussy text provides a sense of reassurance that, though darkness and insecurity may appear in our lives, the light within us never truly disappears'. – The Horn Book
64 pp. hardcover
18.34 x 1.65 x 23.75 cm
Published June 2023 by Enchanted Lion Books
