'While riding their bicycles (Dring-dring, dring-dring!), Chirri and Chirra find a door made of ice. While spa treatments and allaying stress may seem like grown-up interests, modern-day kids are living in an adult-made world of media supersaturation and technological pyrotechnics the Chirri and Chirra books allow young readers to escape into an adult- and complication-free dreamscape of animals, sweets and unimpeded fun.' -STARRED REVIEW, Nell Beram, Shelf Awareness

In a world shaken by uncertainty and mistrust, Chirri & Chirra stands as part pleasurable escape, part vital and vitalizing reminder that sweetness, kindness, and goodwill are irrepressibly alive in the wilderness of the human spirit, though we might sometimes get lost in the forest before rediscovering them.Ĭomplement it with Japanese artist Komako Sakai’s uncommonly tender reimagining of The Velveteen Rabbit, also from Enchanted Lion Books.★ 'Kaya Doi is on to something with her fantastical-nonsensical Chirri and Chirra books. The two girls find themselves amid a fantastical congregation of animals in the middle of the forest - a common theme of Japanese modernist folklore - and conclude their adventure by joining in the colorful choir of creatures. The story is driven by two parallel loves - of the natural world and of the whimsical world - and ends in the greatest unifer of all: song. Everywhere they go, they are met with the kindness and hospitality of various animals - creatures wildly unlike themselves, yet animated by a common impulse for goodness. The dreamsome story follows Chirri and Chirra, each on a bicycle, that most poetic of vehicles, as they wander into the forest on a daylong adventure. After chancing upon one of Doi’s enchanting books, Claudia Zoe Bedrick of Brooklyn indie powerhouse Enchanted Lion Books - publisher of such courageous and sensitive gems as Cry, Heart, But Never Break and The Lion and the Bird - took a chance on Doi. “Two girls discover the secret of life on a sudden line of poetry,” Denise Levertov wrote in her stunning 1964 poem “The Secret.” Somewhere in the world, two girls are always discovering the secret of life, as are the twin protagonists in the poetic and largehearted Chirri & Chirra ( public library) by Japanese children’s book virtuoso Kaya Doi.Īlthough prolific and beloved in Japan, Doi’s work has been slow to migrate West - in no small part because her vibrant yet delicate illustrations demand a special attentiveness to color and paper quality, impossible to reproduce with the cheap commodity approach commercial publishers have even to children’s books today.

Chirri & Chirra by Kaya Doi