Four friends are living in the Yumi Yay universe: Tika, Otti, Billy and Finn. You can find them at our nightlights, but did you know that the Yumi Yay friends also have their own book series? Eline of team BABYmatters will tell you all about it!

“When we started developing Yumi Yay at BABYmatters, it immediately became clear that we didn’t just want to create a new lifestyle brand. It had to be so much more than a brand name. Currently, as most of us are parents at BABYmatters, and seen the fact that we are daily faced with the challenge of parenting, we could actually, very close to home, look for that what transforms a brand name into a concept.”

Very quickly we thought of the idea to write a story with Yumi Yay. Figuratively of course, because we wanted to create an experience with the nightlight. We want to give parents the opportunity to connect with their children, and that is even possible on a daily basis, for instance when they brush their teeth, put on their pajamas or go to sleep. Thanks to Yumi Yay we want to transform a rather boring to-do into a ritual.

We started to think outside the box and asked ourselves: why don’t we literally write a story with Yumi Yay? Because few things are so connecting and soothing as that last bed time story. Children on the lap, or cosy underneath the blankets with the nightlight close by, disappearing in the make-believe world of the Yumi Yay friends.

With our colleague Hanne Luyten we have a real in-house author at BABYmatters, so she obviously started writing again. Rhiming stories about speedy Finn, fearful Otti, sleepy Billy and Tika the kidder were created, and afterwards the next link was put to work.

Didier Quoistiaux is a phenomenal illustrator from Brussels, who made all the drawings for the book series. He really worked with a pen, pencils and paper, and thanks to those special techniques, the books have really become a delight to the eye. You can see that the drawings have not been created in a digital way, but that they were put on an empty paper out of nowhere.

The combination of the short, rhyming text and the cheerful, authentic drawings makes toddlers want to point at the pictures and like the books of the Yumi Yay friends. Toddlers enjoy story time in rhyme and readers who are starting to read like to tell the simple sentences in their turn to their little brother or sister.

With this book series, Yumi Yay creates another connection during a cozy we-moment.

The books are available in four languages.