I Touched the Sun by Leah Hayes

"A boy befriends the sun in a story that will fill readers with the deep warmth emanating from its two lead characters. I wasn't prepared for this book and the affecting warmth of its wisdom." -Cartoonist and illustrator R. Kikuo Johnson

"A beautiful exploration of the inner light in all of us." -Cartoonist and animator Dash Shaw

His mother says it's too far away. His dad says it's too hot. And his brother says he has more important things to do. But none of this discourages a young boy from pursuing his plan: to fly up into the sky to touch the Sun, whose light always feels so nice on his skin. And so, off he goes, all by himself.

Warm and kindly, the Sun shows the boy the world from her perspective: her friends the clouds, the beaches upon which she shines down, the trees she's grown, the rainbows she creates. In return, the boy shares with her some of his dreams, fears, hopes, and uncertainties-complexities of the human condition that the Sun, as a cosmic force of constant light, has never experienced. In this way, the boy begins to understand something about the pattern of light and shadow that makes up every human life.

And when it's time to part ways, the boy returns home to his family changed, with an inner light that reminds him that the cosmic force of the sun is in him, too, always, though darkness falls, though he sleeps and dreams, though doubts and fears and gloominess come, too.

"Hayes tells a tender, surreal story about a young child in awe of the sun's warmth... The boy's peculiar charcoal-gray world is brightened by the deliberate use of color, particularly the vibrant yellow of the sun. Hayes's understated and unfussy text provides a sense of reassurance that, though darkness and insecurity may appear in our lives, the light within us never truly disappears." -The Horn Book

"In graphic novelist Hayes' picture-book debut, a boy gains cosmic knowledge... Sun explains that her light "comes from within"-and that he has an inner light, too. Her touch and the warmth the boy feels lead to an epiphany-"like a little sun inside"-which Hayes depicts as an orange-yellow circle over his heart. It undulates outward in sun-hued rays, powering him back to his loving family. Spare gray line drawings use detail selectively: Hatching textures clouds and earth, and rendering delineates facial features. Humans' skin is the white of the page, like nearly everything in the surrounding space. Crayonlike color is generally reserved for Sun and her selected achievements: plant life, the sunlit sea, a woven rug in sunset colors. Economically told and illustrated yet pulsing with the sun's life-giving energy." -Kirkus Reviews

"A tender parable about how to find and bear your inner light... Carrying the story is the quiet conversation between the black-and-white simplicity of Hayes's pencil and the incandescent richness of her crayons, emanating the candor of a child's drawing and the refined subtlety of an artist's lens on the world - a world of contrasts in the act of being made on the page, like a young life still unwritten, yet to be colored in with living." -Maria Popova, The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings)

"This book is a warm hug. I think about this story and smile endlessly." -Kevin, Books Are Magic