This is a review. The author is responsible for the opinions in the text.
Picture book
Yuki Ainoya
“Rabbit Sato”
Trans. Björn Wada
The thrush, from three years old
Prologues are not very common in picture books. But that’s exactly how the Japanese Yuki Ainoya begins his award-winning story about the rabbit Sato. “One day Haneru Sato became a rabbit. Since that day he has been a rabbit,” she writes, opening the door to a slightly surreal visual world in which anything can happen.
In Yuki Ainoya, a human can easily choose to become a rabbit and live a quiet but rich life in a small house by a large forest. “Kaninen Sato,” her first book translated into Swedish, is divided into seven short chapters, each functioning as a book within a book. The first story, “The Little Pond,” is about something as mundane as watering the plants in the garden. The subsequent “Grasshavet” tells the story of hanging out laundry outside on a beautiful meadow. Nevertheless, the seemingly banal tasks do not develop at all as the reader imagined. It turns out that the little pond has eyes and arms. It huffs and puffs so Sato can water his plants. Meanwhile, the painted field where Sato hangs his sheets to dry is transformed into an impressive, rolling sea for the Rabbit Man to sail on.
With the little ones With this medium, Yuki Ainoya succeeds in painting an everyday poetic existence in which everything seems possible and in which interaction with nature allows the truly magical to happen.
In “Starry Night,” Sato catches stars in a net; in “Watermelon,” the refreshing fruit he eats for dessert eventually turns into a giant boat. During an atmospheric evening walk in shades of purple and orange, a pool of water is transformed into a mirrored glass window – which leads directly to the sky. Overall, transformation and wonder seem to be at the center of Yuki Ainoya’s pictorial universe. The 68-page book, which has conquered countless children’s hearts since its publication in Japan in 2007, conveys the feeling of immersing yourself in a large world hidden in a small format. The experience is simply wonderful.
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