Can You Imagine?: The Art and Life of Yoko Ono

by Lisa Tolin, Yas Imamura (Illustrator)

Overview

A stunning picture book biography in lyrical, poignant prose about Yoko Ono—a brilliant musician and one of the creative minds behind the iconic song “Imagine” by John Lennon.

Yoko Ono has been called many things: Bold. Confrontational. Controversial. Artist. Musician. Witch.

But she has always been, first and foremost, Yoko: a girl who used her imagination to escape the horrors of World War II, and then a woman who used that same gift to find peace after an act of unfathomable violence.

This is a story of a singular soul: an artist, musician, and writer who has always innovated beyond the limits of the accepted, whose brilliance cannot be overshadowed, and whose imagination has been truly revolutionary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534487796
Publisher:	Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	02/11/2025
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	48
File size:	112 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Lisa Tolin is a journalist and editor who has covered arts and entertainment, lifestyle, health, and breaking news for major news organizations. Her years as a journalist gave her the opportunity to interview Yoko Ono in her home. Lisa lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two sons. You can visit Lisa at LisaTolin.com.

Yas Imamura is an Asian American illustrator living in Portland, Oregon. Her works include collaborations with Anthropologie and Sanrio, as well as her growing list of children’s books such as Can You Imagine? by Lisa Tolin and The Elevator on 74th Street by Laura Gehl. Her preferred materials are gouache and watercolor and she often finds herself drawn to projects that are playful, mysterious, and a little offbeat.

Editorial Reviews

"Fresh, perceptive, and worthy of attention."

Kirkus Reviews

★ "Yoko Ono is finally given her due as an artist in this picture book biography, brought to life by Imamura's beautiful and tonally perfect artwork...backmatter cements this as an excellent nonfiction piece."

The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Imamura’s appropriately eclectic illustrations often suspend Ono in the midst of twirling ideas, emotions, and circumstances...Tolin centers her subject’s own rich, sometimes polarizing, life advocating for peace, creativity, and individuality.

Horn Book Magazine

"A fitting tribute to an artist who is both unrepentantly idealistic and unmistakably tough-minded."

Publishers Weekly

2024-10-25
A revealing profile of “the world’s most famous unknown artist,” as her iconic husband put it.

A critic quoted in the afterword echoes that sentiment, claiming that Yoko Ono’s “fame made her almost impossible to see.” Making a brave effort to look past that glare of publicity, Tolin begins with Ono’s childhood imaginings of better relationships with her distant parents and ends with her 2007 “Imagine Peace Tower”; the afterword describes her 2013 “Imagine There’s No Hunger” initiative. A clear theme emerges in this sympathetic overview of her long career. Rather than making her subject’s relationship with John Lennon the center of her story, the author offers enough coverage of those years to assert that the attraction was mutual, reject the notion that the Beatles’ breakup was her fault, and highlight the strength of character it took to weather all the opprobrium. Instead, Tolin focuses on the development of Ono’s idealistic artistic sensibility and descriptions of some of her less controversial works. Imamura’s swirling gouache and watercolor scenes mingle figurative and fanciful images, leaving Ono wreathed in stars and dovelike bundles of paper slips representing wishes for peace. “Slowly, the world turns in her direction,” the author writes—an assertion that may be arguable but will at least encourage dreamers to imagine that they’re not the only ones.

Fresh, perceptive, and worthy of attention. (the art of Yoko Ono, author’s note, photos, select bibliography)(Picture-book biography. 7-9)

Kirkus Reviews