Picture Book Project by Haya Halaw
The little world inside
This page presents Haya Halaw’s first authored and illustrated picture book, currently in development within the Illustrated Arab programme.
All texts and illustrations are unpublished and shared for review and collaboration purposes.
© 2026 Haya Halaw & Illustrated Arab. All rights reserved.
This story is presented as an author-led picture book, marking the first picture book by Haya Halaw as both author and illustrator. It follows a child and her father as they slowly learn how to hold each other again. Along the way, it shows how imagination can become a way of holding on, and how a child’s voice can quietly bring someone back to life. The book works on two levels. It remains accessible to young readers, while also speaking to adults through its deeper emotional undercurrents. It touches on the strength and beauty of childhood, and on the slow, often fragile process of rebuilding after loss.
It belongs to a rare kind of picture book that approaches absence and renewal with restraint and clarity. Through a gentle metaphor, it leaves space for the reader to feel, and make their own meaning.
- Illustrated Arab Team
The Synopsis
Every Sunday, the girl comes home and tells her father about her day. She speaks of a bear she met, tea she shared, fruit she gathered with fairies. Her stories feel magical, yet they grow out of small, ordinary details, drawn from the world they quietly share. They live near a forest. In winter, everything slows down. The days stretch out, hushed and almost empty. Her father is there, close by, saying very little. She feels him nonetheless, even in the silence.
So she talks.
She invents. She brings colour into the stillness. She does not try to fix anything. She simply tells him what she sees, and stays.
Technical details
Genre: Author-led picturebook
Structure: Episodic, relational arc
Theme handling: Indirect, metaphor-based
Target: Children 6/9 + adult readers
Key strength: Emotional precision through minimalism
Length: 16 spreads.
Original Language: English
Haya Halaw
Syrian Author-illustrator, based in Germany
Haya Halaw is an award-winning Syrian illustrator and painter based in Hamburg, Germany. Her practice spans children’s book illustration, editorial work, comics, and painting, engaging with both personal and collective narratives shaped by displacement, memory, and belonging.
She has collaborated with publishers and cultural institutions across the Arab region and internationally, contributing to a wide range of illustrated projects. Her work is characterized by a strong visual language that combines sensitivity and narrative depth, often centering on intimate human experiences and emotional landscapes.
In parallel to her illustration work, Haya Halaw develops a body of paintings that further explores themes of home, identity, and transformation. In 2022, she held her first solo exhibition, Of Home and Land, in Amman, Jordan, marking an important moment in the development of her artistic practice.
She is currently developing her first authored and illustrated picture book within the Illustrated Arab programme, continuing her exploration of visual storytelling through projects that connect artistic creation with broader cultural circulation.
