#Booky100Keepers Day 7: "Can I Build Another Me" / "Why Do I Feel Like This?" by Shinsuke Yoshitake (Thames and Hudson)

What an absolute genius Shinsuke Yoshitake is. Though we only have two books from him in our Booky100Keepers list, they are both absolutely brilliant and well worthy of a permanent place on our shelves.

"Can I Build Another Me" is the sort of book that encourages children to think about themselves and all the things that make them who they are, from their character and their physical appearance through to the really interesting stuff, the way they think, daydream and imagine and also how they interact with the people - and the world - around them.

Shinsuke's drawings are fabulous. Simple but utterly brilliantly effective with so much expression and character.

In this book a young boy decides he needs help to get through his busy day, and comes up with the idea of purchasing a robot companion to take his place. The robot needs to be trained to be an effective doppelgänger though, so both boy and bot begin to explore every single aspect of the boy's life - both who he is and who he aspires to be.

It's damned clever stuff, diving into child psychology in a way you can't possibly imagine could work, let alone be a 'draw' for a young reader and yet here it is - a book that is a brilliant read for fun, but would also be pretty durned useful in schools or elsewhere where you need an opportunity to help kids realise just how fantastic and amazing they really are.

Similarly, "Why do I feel Like this?" does the best job I've ever seen of describing to kids their various emotional states in yet another brilliantly observed and devised book.

This time a young girl examines her feelings throughout her day, from sheer joy to blistering boiling anger, from gigglesome happiness through to deep dark cloud sadness, with the help of a brilliant visual metaphor of mischievous imps that plague her when she's feeling down.

Again Shinsuke's amazing and imaginative illustrations make this almost feel like an operations manual for a child's emotional states and there are so many deft and clever little details here too. As with "Can I Build Another Me" I can imagine how invaluable this would be for parents, teachers and child psychologists to tease out of kids how they're feeling and of course WHY they feel the way they do.

Again I really wish we'd read more of his books, they are truly superb. Unsurprisingly both books made it into our "Book of the Week" slot when originally reviewed.

Original reviews: 

"Can I Build Another Me?"

"Why Do I Feel Like This?"