A Coloring Book You Listen To: How Story, Sound, and Symbolic Imagery Can Become a Doorway to Reflection
By Yezdan Givci, author of Journey
When we are children, we ask so many questions.
What is that?
Why do I feel this way?
Why did someone say something that hurt me?
Why am I afraid?
What lives inside the forest?
What does courage feel like?
What if the creature I fear is actually trying to guide me?
As we grow older, many of those questions become quieter. Life becomes louder. Actually, it becomes noisy. We learn to move quickly, perform well, stay useful, stay realistic, serve the systems around us, and explain ourselves in ways that make sense to the outside world. We become so busy following norms and rules that the deeper questions begin to fade into the background.
But they do not disappear.
They wait somewhere underneath the noise.
Journey began from that place.
It is an illustrated fable and coloring book, but I never wanted it to be only a collection of pages. I wanted it to feel like an experience. Something you enter slowly. Something that gives the reader permission to pause, color, listen, and reconnect with the symbolic language we often leave behind as adults.
I have always been drawn to nature, symbols, myths, animals, spiritual imagery, and the hidden emotional meaning inside objects and stories. A forest is never just a forest to me. An owl is never only an owl. A tiger, a phoenix, a serpent, a path, a shadow, a gate, a question: each one can become a mirror.
That is the world Journey comes from.
The book follows themes of fear, courage, authenticity, transformation, and the questions we stop asking ourselves as we grow up. It is built around symbolic animal archetypes and forest imagery, but the story is not meant to give the reader one fixed answer. I am more interested in creating a space where a person can sit with the question.
Coloring is often seen as a calming activity, and it can be. But I think it can also become something deeper when paired with story and intention. When we color, we slow down. We repeat small movements. We make choices without needing to justify them. We follow lines, but we also bring ourselves into them through color, pressure, rhythm, and mood.
There is something quietly powerful about that, because there is no perfect manual for time spent with the self.
You do not have to be “good” at coloring to receive something from it. You do not have to produce a perfect page. The act itself can become a pause. A small ritual. A way of letting the mind soften enough for something else to come forward.
Just like Crow says in Journey: color outside the lines. Who cares? Maybe that is where the story begins.
That is why sound became such an important part of Journey.
Each page includes a QR code that unlocks original orchestral music mixed with nature soundscapes. The music was composed specifically to guide the emotional atmosphere of each chapter. I wanted the reader not only to see the world, but to hear it. To feel the forest around the page. To feel, for a few minutes, as if they are actually walking inside it.
I also wanted the music to stand on its own. Even if someone listens to the tracks without knowing the book, I still want them to feel the emotional world behind each chapter. Valor carries the feeling of courage. Unbroken Sovereign keeps moving, as if it is never tired of running. In Footsteps of the Elephant, the rhythm itself feels like the elephant walking, while the music continues to tell the story of this ancient, majestic presence that represents time and memory. The album version does not include the nature soundscapes, but inside the book, through the QR codes, the forest becomes alive.
In that sense, Journey became a phygital project: a physical book paired with a digital sound experience. The paper holds the image. The QR code opens the sound. The reader completes the moment through color.
The book is also designed to be enjoyed digitally. For readers who love digital experiences, the QR codes can be opened directly on a tablet without needing another device. Others may choose to print the pages on their favorite paper or canvas and use stronger paints, inks, or mixed media.
That freedom is important to me because Journey is, at its heart, exactly that: your journey. There is no single correct way to enter it. No strict rules. No perfect page. Every reader walks a slightly different path, makes different choices, hears the music differently, and brings a different inner world to the story.
And that, too, is part of the journey.
I tried to create an 8 to 10 minute experience for each chapter so the reader would not feel rushed. The sound has time to follow the movement of the hand, the rhythm of the coloring, and the thoughts that may appear in between.
I sometimes describe it simply as: a coloring book you listen to.
That phrase matters to me because it immediately changes the expectation. The book is not asking to be consumed quickly. It is asking to be entered. The soundtrack is not background decoration. It is part of the emotional architecture of the project.
Sound has a way of reaching places that words and images cannot always reach directly. A melody can prepare the heart before the mind understands why. Nature sounds can create a sense of place before the eye has finished reading the page. Music can hold tension, softness, wonder, fear, release, and transformation without explaining any of them.
When music, image, and story work together, the experience becomes less linear. It becomes more like memory, dream, or myth.
That is also the feeling I am trying to carry into the short film version of Journey that I am currently working on. I do not see it as a simple trailer, but as another doorway into the same world: a way for the story, music, symbols, and atmosphere to move beyond the page.
And myth has always been one of the ways human beings understand themselves.
We tell stories about animals, forests, gods, monsters, hidden doors, impossible journeys, and returning home because these are not only external adventures. They are inner movements. A dragon may be fear. A forest may be uncertainty. A bird may be freedom. A serpent may be transformation. A child may be the part of us that still remembers how to ask.
In Journey, the animal archetypes are not there only to decorate the pages. They carry emotional meaning. They invite the reader to meet different parts of the self through symbolic form. They also remind us that life is made of choices, even the quiet ones we do not notice. Every day, in almost every small moment, we choose whether to avoid, to listen, to move, to hide, to soften, or to continue. The story asks what happens when we avoid fear, what it means to keep moving, and how courage is sometimes less about being fearless and more about being willing to continue with honesty.
I want to be careful here: Journey is not therapy, and I do not present it as a clinical tool. But I do believe in the value of reflective creativity. I believe in art as a doorway. I believe that a page, a sound, a story, or a symbol can give someone a moment with themselves that daily life often does not allow.
Sometimes that is enough.
A quiet moment can matter.
A page can become a mirror.
A color can become a feeling.
A sound can bring us back into the body.
A story can ask the question we were avoiding.
When I completed Journey, the book was reviewed by a clinical psychologist, who praised its ability to guide both children and adults through themes of courage, authenticity, and transformation. That meant a great deal to me because I had always hoped the story could speak across age. Children naturally understand symbolic worlds. Adults often have to remember how.
Maybe that is why illustrated fables still matter.
They do not speak only to the logical mind. They speak to the part of us that understands through image, rhythm, atmosphere, and metaphor. They remind us that not everything meaningful needs to be explained directly. Some things are meant to be felt first.
For me, Journey is an invitation back to that language.
It asks the reader to color the page, scan the sound, and enter the world. Not to escape reality, but to return to it with a little more softness, courage, and imagination.
Because the questions we stop asking ourselves do not disappear.
They wait.
And sometimes, through a story, a symbol, a forest, or a song, they find their way back to us.
About Journey
Journey is a 38-page illustrated fable and phygital coloring experience by Orlando-based interdisciplinary artist Yezdan Givci. Readers color the pages while scanning QR codes to unlock 95 minutes of original orchestral music and nature soundscapes composed specifically for the emotional atmosphere of each chapter.
The project explores fear, courage, authenticity, transformation, and symbolic storytelling through forest imagery and animal archetypes.
A short film version of the Journey world is also currently in development, expanding the same story, symbols, music, and atmosphere into moving image.
Learn more:
Website: https://www.yangtheory.com
Amazon: https://amzn.to/4c1DNeT
Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.yangstudio
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@the.YangStudio
About the Author
Yezdan Givci is an Orlando-based interdisciplinary artist originally from Türkiye. Her work moves between writing, illustration, original music, handmade objects, visual storytelling, and phygital creative experiences. She is the creator of Yang Theory / Yang Studio and the author of Journey.