YOU BE YOU
—

After years in the making, YOU BE YOU is finally going to press!  Rogério Coelho and I are delighted to present the deluxe first edition, available here on this site and on Amazon beginning December 1.  From the stunning cover art through to the final page, we hope you and your children will thrill in our story and these magical illustrations  

YOU BE YOU started with a wonderful client and friend who asked me to create a children's book as part of a TED talk.  I could barely focus in our meeting, my mind was so dazzled by the prospect:  A children's book?!  When I left her office that afternoon, I asked for any last requests; she gave me a hug and whispered, "make it spoken word!"  Spoken word?!  Gulp!  (I'm pretty sure she said it just to terrify me.)

There was so much to do!  The TED talk was 7 weeks away and I needed the story AND the illustrations AND the simple animations we would create for the TED audience so I committed to writing the story over the long Labor Day weekend.  I chased simple rhythms for days, imagining my daughters' preschool teachers reading and clapping along to my playful words with a circle of giggling 3 year olds.  But it was a fruitless pursuit - I could chase rhythms all day long but that wouldn't make for a meaningful narrative.  Then, on Friday night at 2 am, the whole book came to me in the darkness - words, images and a cathartic finish.  I snatched up my phone and wrote it all down in a long email to myself.  I spent the next 2 days, and much of the next 2 years, re-writing the story but the essential form and language remains the same to this day.

YOU BE YOU is the story of a young girl ("You" in fact) venturing on a journey of discovery to paint the great canvas of her life.  In our story, the blank canvas towers over the girl, so big and imposing and impossibly white.  

The blank canvas is the most unnerving place to start, right?  How do you begin? how do you find your path? what if you make mistakes?  The same is true in life:  We all remember the panic of our first days of school, at work, in a new life.  (My first day of first grade was catastrophic: We sat in a circle each with a copy of Dick and Jane; everyone shouted out those first three words while I gaped at my classmates in a panic.  What??  What do they know that I don't?  It was just one word, three times, "Go! Go! Go!" but I was at a loss.  Beginnings are blank canvases ready to be filled with the great adventures of our lives.   This story was written instinctively,  and emotionally, with the hopes of speaking to the inner child in us all, young and old.  I hope that it speaks to moms as much as to young children.  I know 20-somethings that have a cathartic reaction to the story.  I hope it's empowering and leaves the reader wanting to make the most of their lives. 

The TED talk fell to the wayside - for this reason or that  - and my client's attention was pulled away to bigger tasks.  I asked for the story back and she kindly obliged. 

I looked for an illustrator and through profound good luck (and the efforts of the illustration agency, Illozoo) met the incredible Brazilian artist, Rogério Coelho.   I knew from Rogério's work that he created whole worlds in his illustrations (great, twisting wondrous places!). I knew that his characters were funny, delightful, sweet, sad, quirky, frightening, even scary...and yet always endowed with extraordinary grace. I knew all this, and yet nothing prepared me for the beauty he's created in this book.  Every turn of the page opens like a box of wonders. You will spend 15 minutes reading the story and then countless hours poring over every illustration and all its gorgeous details.  If children's books can be works of sorcery, then you have come upon the most magical of them all.  I am eternally grateful for Rogério's deep friendship and extraordinary gift.

Some months ago, I showed our pages to the chairman of a movie studio and she exclaimed, "oh, this story is so important for young girls, it just MUST BE!"  Rogério and I hold onto that belief, too.  We set up our book with an esteemed publishing house in Brazil; the publisher praised the book, exclaiming "it will win all the awards!"  Sadly, our deal collapsed as the economy in Brazil and around the world has crumbled due to Covid 19. And so we took on the challenge of publishing YOU BE YOU ourselves.

This book has been a gift from the start. In fact, the girl in our story receives her own special gift. We wanted the book itself feel like a gift. We spared no expense in crafting the most beautiful book with its thick luxurious paper stock and rich sumptuous colors. We hope it’ll feel like a gift in your life, a book to put on a shelf and return to over the years. We’re even including a special gift inside each book!

For Rogério and I, this publication is a new start, a blank canvas once again; we grab our brushes and begin to paint. We know it’ll be a great adventure - we hope you'll join us! Thank you!  

With warm regards, Richard Brehm and Rogério Coelho