This wordless book, based on a short film by the author, is about returning home after having been away on a journey of any distance or time. Chernysheva's illustrations play with perspective and scale, capturing first the feeling of having outgrown (literally) everything we left behind, then of returning to a time or a place where we feel safe, cared for and loved. The yellow bus the main character rides from the city to her home in the countryside provides an entry point for even young children to make meaning from the images for themselves.

Author is a film director, animator, and artist from Russia.

Portuguese. Originally published in Portugal as O regresso by Bruaá Editora in 2014. Published in the United States by Groundwood/ House of Anansi Press (Toronto) in 2019.

Coming home from her independent city life, a young woman rediscovers childlike wonder and comfort at her grandmother’s house.

A young woman gets on the bus and rides out of the big city. She arrives in the countryside, where she is as big as a giant, looming over a tiny house, a garden and her tiny grandmother. The cabbages and the apple trees are far below. Her grandmother smiles up at her in her yellow hat. The young woman bends down to give her little grandmother a big kiss, and then she smells her grandmother’s cooking. She has returned home. When they sit down at the table, the young woman has shrunk to a child-like size, and the two share a meal together in the garden.

In this gentle, wordless story Natalia Chernysheva beautifully captures the feelings of coming home to comfort and memories and of returning to our childlike selves.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.7
Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.