Yellow Butterfly

War takes away words — they are simply not enough to express all the pain, grief, darkness, fear, and anger that come with it. The silence in Oleksandr Shatokhin’s wordless picture book “Yellow Butterfly” resounds louder than any scream.

A little girl wanders through a black, threatening world, caught in the web of an evil, fat spider that stretches for miles. She falls into puddles, hides from deadly bombs, and stands alone in a vast, desolate landscape. Her world is painted in black, white, and gray — filled with fear, destruction, and loss.

But then, unclasping the fingers that had been covering her eyes, the girl sees a bright yellow butterfly among the colorless ruins. It becomes her guide — a symbol of hope that grows with each page, gradually replacing darkness with light. Even in times of despair, there is always space for hope, love, and peace.

The final spread of the book is rendered in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Here, they stand not only for national pride, but also for the endless golden fields beneath a blue sky — the beauty that war has taken away, but that will one day return.