PICTURE BOOK PROJECT
The Little World Inside
Haya Halaw · Author & Illustrator
A girl fills the quiet Sundays she shares with her father with stories, imagination and small adventures, creating a world they can slowly inhabit together.
Ages 6–9   |   16 spreads   |   English   |   In development
View Selected Spreads ↓ Publishing Enquiries →
Project at a glance
Format
Picture book
Author & Illustrator
Haya Halaw
Audience
Ages 6–9
Length
16 spreads
Original language
English
Project status
Developed
THE STORY
Every Sunday, a girl returns home with stories for her father: a bear she met, tea she shared, fruit gathered with fairies. Her adventures grow from the small details of the world around them, while her father remains close but quiet. As winter settles in, she keeps talking, imagining and bringing colour into their shared silence. Without trying to change him, she creates a space where they can slowly find their way back to one another.
SELECTED SPREADS
Selected development material. Full project material available to publishers on request.
Spread 2.jpg
Spread 4.jpg
Spread 5.jpg
Spread 16.jpg
WHY THIS PROJECT
A child-centred story
Complex emotions unfold through everyday moments, imagination and small gestures rather than explanation.
A distinct visual voice
Text and image develop together through Haya Halaw’s own visual language.
More than one level of reading
A story for children that also leaves space for shared reading across generations.
A woman with long dark hair wearing a red and white striped shirt sitting at a wooden table, resting her chin on her hand, with art supplies including paintbrushes, paints, and papers scattered on the table, in a cozy room with plants, a white slanted ceiling, and a green balloon in the foreground.

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.
PUBLISHING &
RIGHTS ENQUIRIES
Interested in The Little World Inside?
Full project material is available to publishers and professional partners on request.
Contact us at hello@swissarab-cap.ch →