Preview: Oni Press To Publish ‘Missing You’ – Award-Winning Children’s Tale Of Companionship & Loss

by Richard Bruton

Oni Press have announced the April release of a beautiful tale of love, loss, and finding an unusual friend with the English language Missing You by Phellip Willian and Melissa Garabeli.

First released in Brazil in 2019, Missing You this Prêmio Angelo Agostini 2019 Winner for Best Independent Publication finally gets an English language release this April, so that we can enjoy this lovely tale that’s equally heartbreaking and heartwarming.

Here’s the Oni Press PR…

“Following the loss of their mother, Thomas and Lara find an injured deer on the side of the road. Deciding to bring it home with them, they name the deer Lion and quickly become best friends. The new woodland creature soon fills their hearts with warmth and fun, easing their mourning. But when Lion grows more and more curious about the forest beyond their house, Thomas and Lara start to wonder if the forest is where Lion truly belongs. Will they be able to say goodbye to their new friend?”

That’s all you really need to know about this one, it’s a story that you’ll probably already and yes, Oni Press fully acknowledges that this one’s very much in the vein of Bambi and The Fox and the Hound.

But even though it’s one of those stories where you know exactly what’s going to happen pretty much every step of the way, you don’t mind it because it’s all laid out so beautifully for you and illustrated so gorgeously, so lushly by Melissa Garabeli.

It perfectly hits all the right beats all the way through, the sentiment is there, that sense of sadness that you can feel through it all from early on – even if you didn’t know the big emotional thing of the kids losing their mother.

And as the kids take care of little Lion and little Lion turns into not so little Lion, it nearly all plays out as you’d expect, right to the ending. But like I say, it doesn’t matter, you’re wonderfully wrapped up in the story and, like a lovely warm blanket, you just want to cuddle in tighter and enjoy the experience right to the obvious end.