Yo! Yes?

This adorable book deals with acceptance, cross cultural/racial understanding, and the importance of punctuation and inflection in a very simple, child-friendly way. My second and third grade students love to take turns reading this to each other. One of my all-time favorites!

This book is good for kids because it shows how you can be friends with someone even though you may not know them very well. It shows children how to be sweet.

This is a simplistic, yet really captivating book. However, the overarching theme of the book is not simple. This is a wonderful book about making friends. We can talk to kids about how we make friends. Who we make friends with and just overall, how to be kind to one another.

Yo! Yes? tells ths story of two young boys becoming friends in only 34 words. However, these words are filled with such meaning and empathy, and the drawings of these two characters lend so much emotion and realness to these boys that the reader is rooting for these two to beome friends in an

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almost visceral way. Each boy usually says only one word, but these words caused me to flip the page expectantly each time, always wondering what was going to happen next. Raschka's pen and ink drawings of a multi-cultural friendship could easily have been flat and pedantic, but instead almost leap from the page in their emotive force. Even the body language of the boys can be easily discerned by the reader, and I'd love to see what additional thoughts children ascribe to these characters when reading.

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Yo! Yes? Is a simple picture book about two boys who become friends. This is a book with little words, where the illustrations tell it all. It portrays these two boys as different from one another in many ways. One is an African American and the other white. Their dialect is also different. The two

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boys speak differently than one another, but do not portray either as being more superior. It puts value on both of the two characters and their friendship.

This book is an example of a multicultural friendship. Although the text is simple, the book carries a heavy message. The two boys break a boundary and become friends. Their curiosity and loneliness brings them together. It is, “the story of you and the story of me is the story of life on many a street, happening tremendously right this minute.”

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4P
This book explains Radical Change theory in a couple of ways. It exemplifies the Interactivity principle in that the text helps add meaning to the story. For instance, the size of font when the white boy says "no friends" gives a sense of his feeling sad and small. The book also illustrates the

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Connectivity principle in that Raschka is demonstrating the creation of community and social worlds between two unfamiliar individuals.

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Simple, simple, simple, but so incredibly powerful. As a little Caucasion boy walks by, a little African American boy calls out, "Yo!". The other child responds, "Yes?" and so begins a conversation where the longest utterance is two words long. By using question and response, the African American

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boy discovers that the other boy has "no friends" and generously offers his. When the other boy accepts with a resounding "Yes!", the two new friends walk off together and jump up hollering, "Yow!"
Evocative and appealing, this book demonstrates how simple it is to become friends when you're a child - a lesson for all of us!

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Use this in a language lesson. Print out only the words for the students and have them use the words as a script to act out a short scene using their own interpretation of the script. Excellent lesson!

Yo! Yes? is a book about two boys and how they meet, the start talking and one of the boys is very sad because he does not have friends. The two boys become friends at the end of the book.

I can relate to this book because as a military child, I always moved when I was little and every time I moved,

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I had to make new friends. And it was always hard finding friends who talk to you because most kids ignored me because I was the "new girl".

I would use this book in a classroom to show students how you may not know all the real reasons for a person being sad, but if you just be their friend, they could feel better. And to show students how talking to our children can make you new friends.

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Yo! Yes? Is a powerful book about how words, even small words have such power in them. Also a good book for English Language Learners as it doesn't have many words but a lot of meaning.

This is book is very simple when looking at just the text. There is only one word per page. Yet the whole book contains a full range of emotions and conversations that often take place through just body language. It is a realistic fiction book because it is about two boys becoming friends. This is

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story that happens every day with children, and is something that all of us as human beings have experienced
Level: Primary
Stars:Style

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A beautiful book about friendship told in about 34 words. The beginnings of a friendship are expressed more in the emotions displayed in the illustrations than in the dialogue. A great book for young students to retell and act out.

This is a very simple book for an early reader, with no page having more than two words (all dialog) on it.

The story is really told in the illustrations. You can see so much from how the boys stand, how small or big their words are. Very sweet story... and at a level a five year old can easily read.

Two boys communicate and become friends with few words.

The book would be great for a discussion about various types of communication.

The tale of two boys who strike up a minimalist conversation in the street. One is white and the other is black, and at first the air seems tense with uncertainty about the outcome of their meeting. One of the boys apparently has no friends, and the other boy is empathetic. In the end, the two boys

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have an amazing discovery, that they both just want the same thing, to become friends and play together despite all of their apparent differences.

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Friendship is an essential thing to have. People need friends to talk with, share memories with, laugh with, and cry with. Friends are what people need because sometimes they "get" or understand someone else when no one else does. Friends do not let silly things like race and gender get in the way

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because everyone is human. "Yo, Yes" is a book that helps portray this message. Children do not see color, culture, or gender as a defining thing until they are taught to do so. The message that is most important in this book is that making friends can be easy, and while someone is making friends, multicultural backgrounds or race does not matter. Both boys, in this story, have two totally different personalities (most people do by the way.) One of the boys appear to be Black, and the other appears to be White. They both speak differently and have different body language, but they both want to be friends. So, the message that is loud and clear towards the end is that nothing else matters, the two boys can still be friends. This book has an important message because everyone needs to understand that everyone is different even if they are from the same culture, race, or gender, and that people should not let things like that define others; everyone can have friends that are different. Children can do it, why can't everyone else?

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Chris Raschka, Yo! Yes? NY: Orchard Press 1993.

Yo! Yes? by Chris Raschka is a Caldecott Honor picture book detailing a seemingly simple, short dialogue between two boys of different ethnic backgrounds. One boy is friendly and assertive, the other is quite shy. After friendly child finds the other

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having no friends, he initiates a friendship with the other and both are enthusiastic. The story sends a powerful message of how easy it is to create positive relationships with others in just a few, short words. The text is succinct, yet the font and size carries impact. The illustrations look to be drawn in crayon, with soft lines, and the details and coloring are focused on the children. The format and contiguity of the text and images would be very easy for a child to pay attention to, and would be appropriate for readers from 5-7 years old. The simplicity of the book makes it great for a beginning reader, and the message and style of the book makes it great for a more advanced reader.

Recommended book from the same decade:
David Shannon, No, David! NY: Blue Sky Press

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This book is about two boys who meet and become friends. Although the color of their skin may be different, they accept each other differences, and stick together.

Yo Yes was a book that didn't really get my attention it was all one word going back and forth. I guess this book was suppose to be a weird way of how people sometimes talk to one another.

A boy thinks he does not have any friends, until another boy decides to reach out in a simple way.

The rhyming pattern and poetry in this book are so much fun for children to follow along to. The poetry is also created into a story that is very fun to read.

A story full of statements and making friends.

I really like this author and his honesty in his books. After the initial shock of his content, I started to enjoy his stories. Thsi book is about to boys who becom friends. This is a very simple worded book, but has great meaning.

To sum it up this book shows how friendships begin.