Move Therapy – Tiny Books for Tiny People

Adele Vincent from Move Therapy received a Yoga For Good grant in 2024 to support Tiny Books for Tiny People—a collection of themed miniature yoga books for children. With over 25 titles in the works, the project blends creativity, mindful movement and storytelling in a uniquely accessible format.

These Tiny Yoga Books, measuring just 7.5 x 7.5 cm, are designed for little hands, short attention spans and big imaginations. The grant made it possible for Adele to collaborate with illustrator Emily, who brought the animal characters to life, while Adele focused on sumi-e–style brush-painted yoga poses. Their shared creative process has brought warmth and clarity to a book series that invites play, movement and calm.

The grant gave Adele the means to commit to a high-quality creative process and helped make this unique vision financially viable through the long production phase.

“These tiny books make yoga playful and accessible, giving children simple tools to move, breathe and feel calm anywhere.”

An illustrated path to movement

The first six months of the project were dedicated to illustration exploration. While early drafts involved AI, chalk and ink, Adele eventually settled on Japanese sumi-e brush painting for its meditative feel and clean, simple forms. With over 600 illustrations planned, this was the more labour-intensive path, but the right one.

Emily embraced the technique, developing a beautiful and expressive style for the animal illustrations. Adele used sumi-e to depict human silhouettes in yoga poses and cover designs. Their creative rhythm now flows through every step of production, from hand-painting and scanning, to digital clean-up and layout in InDesign, through to colour selection and text writing.

So far, several books have been completed, including This is a sheepig, This is a baby, This is a savannah, This is the grass, This is a farm and This is the sea, with more underway. Once a strong base of titles is ready, they’ll begin rolling out the books through Adele’s website and Etsy shop.

The books are designed to be printed and coloured in. Their small size and downloadable format make them ideal and accessible for classrooms, childcare centres and homes around the world. Children can choose from a wide range of themes, from deserts and billabongs to dinosaurs and magic, and even help assemble the books themselves.

What does the future hold for Tiny Books? Recording read-along yoga videos for each book and uploading them to YouTube. These will give families and teachers an easy way to follow along, even if they’re new to yoga. The videos will also support primary school teachers to integrate yoga and movement into their lessons to build focus, calm and wellbeing in young learners.

“Thank you so much for the funding and support that’s made this project a reality. YFG’s belief in the project, by funding it, is as important to me as the funding itself. I hope thousands of children and families will benefit from the good work of YFG and the Tiny Yoga Book series.” – Adele Vincent

“Adele’s creative approach helps little learners explore mindfulness through stories, animals and joyful movement.”

Read the original article on the Yoga For Good website:
yogaforgood.com.au/yoga-grant-adele-tiny-books