Can You Imagine?

The Art and Life of Yoko Ono

A TRUE TALE WITH

A CHERRY ON TOP

Atheneum Books for Young Readers

(Simon & Schuster)

(pub. 2.11.2025)

48 pages

Ages 4 - 8

Author: Lisa Tollin

   Illustrator: Yas Imamura

Character: Yoko Ono

Overview:

" Yoko Ono has been called many things: Bold. Confrontational. Controversial. Artist. Musician. Witch.

But she has always been, first and foremost, Yoko: a girl who used her imagination to escape the horrors of World War II, and then a woman who used that same gift to find peace after an act of unfathomable violence."

Tantalizing taste:

"Yoko turns her dreams into art.

She creates a chessboard all in

white and invites people to play.

How might a game work if you and

your opponent are the same?

She asked people to glue

together shards of broken pottery

to show that even broken things

deserve healing.

Yoko has strangers write wishes on paper and tie them

to a tree until the branches are covered. The dreams of

all humanity, joined together."

And something more: Lisa Tollin in the Author's Note in Can You Imagine? explains: "Almost fifty years after iImagine' was recorded, Yoko was given songwriting credit on the song. Although her name was nor originally listed on the recording, John [Lennon] had said it should be been.... It was one of the most performed songs of the twentieth century... She worked on a campaign to end childhood hunger, called 'Imagine There's No Hunger.'"