Today’s post comes to you from Lisa Wilcut:

Shinsuke Yoshitake is a Japanese author/illustrator, philosophical humorist, and beloved cultural icon with an instantly recognizable artistic style. His books have been translated into more than ten languages and have sold more than ten million copies worldwide. His picture books appear regularly on ‘best of’ lists by The New York Times and Kirkus Reviews and have garnered dozens of major awards in Japan and internationally.

His picture books are humorous, existential, extended flights of fancy. Many grapple with one of the Big Problems, approaching it in a simple, humorous way that feels like the thought process of a child, but with insights that children (and adults) might not arrive at alone. There is genius in the way he leads you along from one thing to another, following a train of thought through amazing and truly inspired iterations.

Generally, the action in his picture books takes place over a very short period of time – often the span of a daydream. The books usually have a child protagonist who explores a feeling or situation through first-person stream-of-consciousness narrative or in dialogue with friends and parents. Those children often realize that grown-ups experience the same thing they do, or that something negative is only temporary, or that there are countermeasures to their predicament, or that the future may be different to the present.

There are things you can count on in a Shinsuke Yoshitake picture book, like the way his spare portrayals of the mundane moments of everyday life capture something essential about the human experience. And wordplay, visual humor, and amazing variations on a theme. Many books have at least one page where the anatomy of something is playfully broken down and labeled.

At the time of this writing (August 2026), sixteen of the thirty-two picture books listed on the author’s website have been published in English. More will certainly follow. (That’s of the 112 books in total, many of which are volumes of his own illustrated essays but also books that he’s illustrated but not authored.) Those sixteen picture books appear below in the groupings they naturally fall into, starting with ones for the youngest readers. The publication data includes his translators where possible, but sadly, only five books of the sixteen name the translator.

Books for Younger Readers

These first five books are clearly for younger readers. Still Stuck is a bit of a loner, given that the other four are something along the lines of a set, loosely speaking. They share the same dimensions and other similarities in design and layout. Yet all five have similar characteristics in terms of conception and flow. They are all flights of fancy, following a child either in a particular predicament, or just having fun exploring a certain idea. They all share the same kind of narrative arc, which feels like a visual jazz riff on the predicament or theme in question.

One thing Shinsuke Yoshitake does so well in these books for younger kids is to make them feel seen. He captures moments of real experiences, ones that maybe no one talks about, ones a child might think are unique to her, or that she might feel embarrassed about. And it’s wonderful that he merely portrays those moments, those thoughts, doing it in a very dry, yet droll sort of way, with no moralizing or instruction or explicit affirmation.

• Still Stuck Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2017)
• I Can Be Anything Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named (Chronicle Books, 2020)  
• Is It Just Me? Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translated by Rico Komanoya (Thames & Hudson, 2022) 
• I Won’t Give Up My Rubber Band Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translated by Sofiane Kohen (Chronicle Books, 2022) or It’s My Rubber Band Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translated by Sofiane Kohen (Thames & Hudson, 2022)
• I Can Open It For You Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translated by Lisa Wilcut (Chronicle Books US) 2023, or I Can Open That Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translated by Lisa Wilcut (Thames & Hudson UK 2023)

Two ‘Sets’ for the Four-to-Ten Crowd

As the covers indicate, the two books on the left have a lot in common, as do the two on the right. Both That’s Not Fair and I Can Explain have kids and parents going head-to-head in battles of logic and persuasion as they grapple with an issue from their various perspectives. In contrast, in There Must Be More Than That! and The Boring Book, kids explore an issue through their own imagination. All four feature the classic Shinsuke Yoshitake treatment of turning an idea over and over, inside and out, following it through several iterations. This grouping of books is a bit more complex than the last in the use of diagrams and arrows to map out the progression of thought on the page.

• The Boring Book Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named (Chronicle Books, 2019)
• There Must Be More Than That!  Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named (Chronicle Books, 2020)
• I Can Explain Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named (Chronicle Books, 2022
• That’s Not Fair Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named (Chronicle Books 2024)

The Imagination Series (Junior Fiction)

This is where Shinsuke Yoshitake’s picture book career started, when he burst onto the scene in 2013 with Ringo Kamo Shirenai (published in English in 2015 as It Might Be An Apple). In Japan, it won first place in the annual MOE Children’s Book Awards and the Art Prize in the 61^st Annual Children’s Publishing Culture Awards. 

Again noting that you can tell a little something about a book by its cover, these covers are noticeably more detailed than in any of the previous collections. The interiors follow suit, with spread after spread of delightfully detailed trains of thought. The content ranges from the existential concerns of fruit to the essence of personhood, the nature of grumpiness, the possibilities of mapping, and the afterlife.

• It Might Be An Apple Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named (Thames & Hudson, 2015) 
• Can I Build Another Me? Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named (Thames & Hudson, 2016)
• What Happens Next? Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named (Thames & Hudson, 2017) 
• Why Do I Feel Like This? Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named / Thames & Hudson, 2020)
• I Wonder Where I Am? Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translator not named (Thames & Hudson, 2024)

For Older Readers

The last two books are alike only in that they are fairly chunky (at 104 and 136 pages) and feel slightly less like they are mainly for kids. (Though I do suspect that adults love all the books mentioned here every bit as much as children do.) Most of the many characters in The I Wonder Bookstore are adults, and although the titular Memen and Mori are children, the text there is timeless and aphoristic. However, both books are quite appropriate for kids from around age six (for From Memen to Mori) or around age eight (for The I Wonder Bookstore).

They also seem a fitting way to round out our peek into the picture books of Shinsuke Yoshitake. The I Wonder Bookstore has every kind of book imaginable, save one, and as various books take center stage, the flights of fancy are more complex and more numerous than in any of the other books. Plus, From Memen to Mori has so many of the ideas about what life is all about that are nascent in the other books, and they nestle together snugly in a message from one sibling to another.

• From Memen to Mori Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translated by Ajani Oloye (Yen Press, 2025)
• The I Wonder Bookstore Written and illustrated by Shinsuke Yoshitake / Translated by Geoffrey Trousselot (Chronicle Books, 2019) 

Lisa Wilcut is a Yokohama-based translator of Japanese literature for all ages and is deeply in love with picture books. Her published and forthcoming picture book translations include works by Shinsuke Yoshitake, Ryōji Arai, Kayako Nishimaki, tupera tupera, Shingo Nagasaki, Iku Dekune, and Fumiko Takeshita.