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Why Not? and My Hairless Dad by Yassaman Emami

Yassaman Emami, MA Children's Literature: Children's Book Illustration student, presents two illustrated children's books with original stories.

An illustration of a man lying on a bed while a small girl draws on his arm

My Hairless Dad by Yassaman Emami

'Why Not?' is about a dog who gets lost, but is super excited about it. She seizes the opportunity to try all the new things she had never had a chance to try before. Yassaman drew inspiration from her own experiences of when she moved to the UK for the first time and was excited to try new things, acknowledging that sometimes it's fun, but some things were just not for her.  

An illustration showing a small dog and some people some distance away, framed by green leaves

Why Not? by Yassaman Emami

The idea behind the book is to show a young audience that they have a life ahead of them that they can fill with exploration, and that it's always good to try things. The message of the book is that sometimes it will work out, sometimes it won't - but at least they will have had fun.  

'My Hairless Dad' is a 32-page picture book about a little girl who goes to a barbershop to buy some hair for her hairless dad, and stays there for a while to pick her favourite hair do. For this project, Yassaman experimented with her technique.  

This story started with a prompt from one of Yassaman's tutors, simply "A child goes to a barber..." The story developed based on Yassaman's personal experiences and reflections on personal challenges she has faced with embracing and loving her appearance, which hasn't always been easy for her.  

Since it was the last project I was doing for the course, I noticed how much I've grown and how much more confidence I have in my work now.

Yassaman Emami, MA Children's Literature: Children's Book Illustration student

A drawing of a person sitting on a chair with a long plait of hair. A little girl holds the plait. There is another figure in the background, and another person is peering in through a doorway.

My Hairless Dad

A drawing showing the back of somebody's head with their hair being cut with a razor, and another figure sat in front of a mirror in a barber's wearing a cape, and a little girl stood nearby.

With this story, Yassaman wanted to praise the dad's bald head 鈥� as in society, hairlessness is often not presented in a positive way. She was inspired by a quote from Sohrab Sepehri 鈥� a poet and painter from Iran. The quote goes, "We must wash our eyes. We must see differently." The story shows that sometimes there's no need to struggle to change things that are out of our control, when we can only change our perspective towards things around us.