Kyo Maclear

"A writer's search for inspiration, beauty, and solace leads her to birds in this ... meditation on creativity and life"--

A Year of Observation

Birds Art Life

When her sister succumbs to a mood that makes the whole family feel topsy-turvy, Vanessa paints a wonderful imaginary place--a beautiful garden complete with a ladder and a swing--in a story loosely based on the writer Virginia Woolf and her artist sister, Vanessa Bell.

Virginia Wolf

A story of friendship, first crushes, opera and the high drama of middle school told by award-winning Kyo Maclear in her debut graphic novel.

Operatic

An unforgettable memoir about a family secret revealed by a DNA test, the lessons learned in its aftermath, and the indelible power of love—for readers of Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance and Katherine May’s Wintering. “Magnificent...I will never forget it.” —Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance “A mind-altering and supremely generous exploration of kinship, selfhood, memory, and the roots we share across time, space and species.” —Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything Three months after Kyo Maclear’s father dies in December 2018, she gets the results of a DNA test showing that she and the father who raised her are not biologically related. Suddenly Maclear becomes a detective in her own life, unravelling a family mystery piece by piece, and assembling the story of her biological father. Along the way, larger questions arise: what exactly is kinship? And what does it mean to be a family? Unearthing is a captivating and propulsive story of inheritance that goes beyond heredity. Infused with moments of suspense, it is also a thoughtful reflection on race, lineage, and our cultural fixation on recreational genetics. Readers of Michelle Zauner’s bestseller Crying in H Mart will recognize Maclear’s unflinching insights on grief and loyalty, and keen perceptions into the relationship between mothers and daughters. What gets planted, and what gets buried? What role does storytelling play in unearthing the past and making sense of a life? Can the humble act of tending a garden provide common ground for an inquisitive daughter and her complicated mother? As it seeks to answer these questions, Unearthing bursts with the very love it seeks to understand.

A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets

Unearthing

When you have to leave behind almost everything you know, where can you call home? Sometimes home is simply where we are: here. A imaginative, lyrical, unforgettable picture book about the migrant experience through a child's eyes. When a little girl and her younger brother are forced along with their family to flee the home they've always known, they must learn to make a new home for themselves -- wherever they are. And sometimes the smallest things -- a cup, a blanket, a lamp, a flower, a story -- can become a port of hope in a terrible storm. As the refugees travel onward toward an uncertain future, they are buoyed up by their hopes, dreams and the stories they tell -- a story that will carry them perpetually forward. This timely, sensitively told story, written by multiple award--winner Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Sendak Fellowship recipient Rashin Kheiriyeh, introduces very young readers in a gentle, non-frightening and ultimately hopeful way to the current refugee crisis.

Story Boat

Chris Turnham

Charles wants to find a wish tree. His brother and sister don't believe there is such a thing, but his trusty companion Boggan is ready to join Charles on a journey to find out. And along the way, they discover that wishes can come true in the most unexpected ways. The poetic text and heartwarming illustrations evoke the true essence of the holiday season and will inspire wishers everywhere. This gem of a book deserves center stage year round.

The Wish Tree

The Lizsts make lists. They make lists most usual and lists most unusual. They make lists in Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn; they make lists every day except Sunday, which is a listless kind of day anyway. So does their cat. Then one day a visitor arrives. A visitor not on anyone's invite list. How will The Lizsts handle something unexpected arising? Kyo Maclear's quirky, whimsical story - perfectly bought to life with the droll, witty illustrations of Jlia Sarda - is a humorous and poignant celebration of spontaneity.

The Liszts

la belleza de las cosas pequeñas y significativas

Los pájaros, el arte y la vida

While banished to a dusty study one day "to think things over," a boy pulls a book off a shelf and with great reluctance begins to read. As the afternoon passes, the story nabs him and carries him away. Before long, this good little book becomes his loyal companion, accompanying him everywhere ... until, one day, the book is lost. Will this bad little boy get back his good little book? Will the good little book survive on its own without a proper jacket? A quirky, enchanting tale of literary love and loss -- and love found again -- that will win the heart of even the most reluctant reader.

The Good Little Book

Friends Julia and Simca belive you can never use too much butter and being a child forever is best, with this in mind the pair decide to create recipes for growing young that will be served to the busy adults around them.

Julia, Child

Spork, whose mom is a spoon and his dad is a fork, tries to fit in with the other utensils, but finds that he is never chosen at mealtimes and seems destined to spend his life in the drawer.

Spork

For readers of Crying in H Mart and Wintering, an unforgettable memoir about a family secret revealed by a DNA test, the lessons learned in its aftermath, and the indelible power of love. Three months after Kyo Maclear’s father dies in December 2018, she gets the results of a DNA test showing that she and the father who raised her are not biologically related. Suddenly Maclear becomes a detective in her own life, unravelling a family mystery piece by piece, and assembling the story of her biological father. Along the way, larger questions arise: what exactly is kinship? And what does it mean to be a family? Thoughtful in its reflections on race and lineage, unflinching in its insights on grief and loyalty, Unearthing is a captivating and propulsive story of inheritance that goes beyond heredity. What gets planted, and what gets buried? What role does storytelling play in unearthing the past and making sense of a life? Can the humble act of tending a garden provide common ground for an inquisitive daughter and her complicated mother? As it seeks to answer these questions, Unearthing bursts with the very love it seeks to understand.

A dazzling picture book biography of one of the world's most influential designers, Elsa Schiaparelli. Elsa dared to be different, and her story will not only dazzle, it will inspire the artist and fashionista in everyone who reads it. By the 1930s Elsa Schiaparelli had captivated the fashion world in Paris, but before that, she was a little girl in Rome who didn’t feel pretty at all. Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli is the enchanting story for young readers of how a young girl used her imagination and emerged from plain to extraordinary. As a young girl in Rome, Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) felt “brutta” (ugly) and searched all around her for beauty. Seeing the colors of Rome’s flower market one day, young Elsa tried to plant seeds in her ears and nose, hoping to blossom like a flower. All she got was sick, but from that moment, she discovered her own wild imagination. In the 1920 and '30s, influenced by her friends in the surrealist art movement, Schiaparelli created a vast collection of unique fashion designs—hats shaped like shoes, a dress adorned with lobsters, gloves with fingernails, a dress with drawers and so many more. She mixed her own bold colors and invented her own signature shades, including shocking pink. Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli is a stunning and sophisticated picture book biography that follows Schiaparelli’s life from birth and childhood to height of success. Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad (creators of Julia, Child) have gorgeously interpreted Schiaparelli’s life. Maclear tells a lyrical story with moments both poignant and humorous and Morstad’s elegant imagery saturates the pages with Schiaparelli-inspired shapes and colors. Informative backmatter and suggested further reading included.

Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli

Soon after a young girl arrives in Japan, she, her grandmother, her aunties, and some cousins celebrate cultural traditions together while visiting a bath house.

The Big Bath House

Friends Yak and Dove are complete opposites. Yak is large and Dove is small. Yak has fur and Dove has feathers. Yak is polite. Dove is ill-mannered. Yak likes quiet. Dove likes noise. One day as Yak and Dove list their differences they come to the conclusion that maybe they aren't meant to be friends. In the hope of finding a new best friend, Yak holds auditions. But when a small feathered contestant sings Yak's favorite song, the two begin to think that maybe they are alike after all...

Yak and Dove

Hello, Rain!

A writer’s intimate and exuberant search for creativity, meaning, and solace leads her to birdwatching in this “profound, charming memoir of art, books, life—and birds” (Minneapolis Star Tribune). When it comes to birds, Kyo Maclear isn’t seeking the exotic. Rather she discovers joy in the seasonal birds that find their way into view in city parks and harbors, along eaves and on wires. In a world that values big and fast, Maclear looks to the small, the steady, the slow accumulations of knowledge, and the lulls that leave room for contemplation. An “inspiring” (Parade) read, Birds Art Life celebrates the particular madness of chasing after birds in the urban environment and explores what happens when the core lessons of birding are applied to other aspects of art and life. Moving with ease between the granular and the grand, peering into the inner landscape as much as the outer one, this “timely and generous reprieve from anxiety, fear, and grief” (Globe and Mail) and “incandescent exploration of beauty, inspiration, art, family, and freedom” (Toronto Star) was sprung from Maclear’s sense of disconnection, her passions faltering under the strain of daily existence. Ultimately, however, Birds Art Life is about the value of reconnection—and how the act of seeking engagement and beauty in small ways can lead us to discover our most satisfying and meaningful lives. In this “fragile fluid commentary…The reader can relax in the solitude of Maclear’s musings as the words gently flow into the consciousness” (Seattle Book Review, 5/5 stars).

The uplifting journey of a cloud (“kumo” in Japanese) who overcomes her shyness — and discovers the rewards of feeling seen. Kumo is a bashful cloud whose only wish is to float unseen. When she’s assigned cloud duty for the day, she feels overwhelmed by self-doubt and her fear of being noticed. But after learning that closing your eyes isn’t a good solution to your troubles, Kumo pulls her fluff together and does her duties — drifting, releasing rain and providing shelter — meeting some new friends along the way and inspiring the imagination (and capturing the heart) of a small daydreamer like her. Kyo Maclear’s sweetly humorous and lyrical parable about overcoming shyness, inspired by her own experience as an author, and vividly brought to life by Nathalie’s Dion’s ethereal illustrations, is an affirmation of the pleasures of community and the confidence that can arise from friendship and visibility.

The Bashful Cloud

Kumo

‘Now when I hear birdsong, I feel an entry to that understory. When I am feeling too squeezed on the ground, exhausted by everything in my care, I look for a little sky. There are always birds flying back and forth, city birds flitting around our human edges, singing their songs.’

Birds Art Life Death: The Art of Noticing the Small and Significant

It is 1989 and Naiko is working in the Undeliverable MailOffice, a cavernous space that resembles a giant, congested pawnshop. Immersedin things lost and missing, she searches for clues to match undeliverable mailwith addresses, a job that allows her to achieve a semblance of order in adisorderly world. It is a shock, then, when Naiko’s co-worker Andrei, anenigmatic Romanian refugee who has become the unlikely object of Naiko’sfascination, suddenly vanishes. As the novel reveals itself in exquisitely wrought layers thatdrift through time from the Second World War to the fall of communism, Andrei’sstory of his past life in communist Romania becomes an opaque reflection ofNaiko’s own existence, and objects—from the pens hoarded by Naiko’s motherin her retirement home to the personal effects of Jewish women that Andrei’sgrandmother sorts through at Birkenau—become touchstones for memories andmeaning, loss and love. A luminous debut novel from a rising talent of the newgeneration of Canadian writers, The Letter Opener is a compelling work ofliterary fiction that glows with truth.

Kyo Maclear

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