Written and Illustrated by Sobogi

A child who is almost about to cry soon at the cover page finally bursts into tears when we open this book. A white space where the child sits down seems to be his own space he can cry as much as he wants. Then, he slowly goes to the next page and asks his little sister, who is also crying in her pajama, “Why are you crying, too?” Just like this, the boy’s line is always the same. He finds out someone crying in different places and gently asks them the same questions.
Their answers are all different whether they are lonely or they are touched. 25 main characters in this book take turns to open up their minds and share their stories.
The hidden meanings of their stories, which readers may not be sympathized with, are meticulously represented in illustrations drawn in two pages. The first page showing how they cry and the second page with cartoon cuts to explain why are both expressed in similar colors and feelings. Each space of characters made by the writer’s angle is not only unique but also friendly to readers in our ordinary life. Even the shape of buildings, items around characters, and even just a normal outfit style make readers feel welcomed and familiar. Moreover, these impressive descriptions of situations also include humor in them. Readers can be willingly into these 25 stories through details strongly connected with our daily life and witty expressions.

When all these stories are over, characters begin wiping each other’s tears. Through their stories, readers can discover ourselves who used to cry for the same reason or used to repress tears, and can comfort ourselves. And we can also go back to the boy at the cover page and kindly asks him why he cries. Just like the cat and the boy asking each other gently, readers will be able to comfort and support each other through this book.

“Why are you crying?”, a simple question to comfort others
The first word we said when we were born was nothing but crying. In this picture book, everyone naturally begins crying. There are a lot of various emotions such as expectation, disappointment, loss, solitude, regret, frustration, fear, comfort, and gratefulness, etc. in crying. And among these stories, there are sad stories which resembles me of my own day, or funny but also frustrated stories as well. There are also stories we can never expect the ending and stories we all can understand even if we haven’t experienced before. Therefore, the question, “Why are you crying?”, which makes people open up their minds, is just a simple question, but also difficult to ask really. And no one adds unnecessary comfort by saying, ‘don’t cry’ or ‘cry as much as you want’. This is just a casual greeting to a friend. This means that this simple question treats crying without prejudice, and comforts our emotions.

The body language of the boy shows even more genuine comfort for us. The answers toward the question are not typical. Instead, the characters know exactly why they cry and frankly share their stories. When we track down the reason of the reason, we might find another fundamental answers. And in this book, everyone wipes each other’s tears and smiles even if there is no solution in the end. In fact, when we cry, the same neurohormone coming out when we laugh begins emerging, and we can relieve our stress, feel stable, and even our physical immune system even improves. The epilogue of this book shows how powerful the act of crying is. It is much easier to be strong after crying instead of enduring crying like main characters in this book.