“Do you think children remember their mum’s lap years later?”

This book of chronicles, written by hand over a year, came about after a conversation I had with a lady, on a garden bench in Lisbon. At the time, I lived in Benfica and we were in the most critical phase of the Pandemic, when the outlines of a text in chronicle format began to be drawn.

From November 2020 until October 2021, I wrote about the events and experiences I lived in a Lisbon neighborhood. All the stories contained in this book are true and some of them represent sacred confidences made by people who trusted me with some of their memories.

This is how my love for chronicles and biographies was born. “The Yellow Notebook” had its first edition in 2022 (with cover and editing by Ozias Filho) and a reissue in 2023, now in a revised and expanded version.

The book, in both printed and digital format, can be purchased at the website store, in Portuguese, English and German.

People approach us when they feel that we are actively listening and that we are attentive listeners to what they say. Most of us just want to be heard and another part, unfortunately increasingly significant, feels ignored by the world.

There are many stories and life lessons that are hidden within people, who live alone and without anyone by their side to tell their memories. That’s what happened when, in November 2020, a lady in her seventies sat next to me, on a garden bench. Without knowing me at all, the first question she asked me was: “Do you think children remember their mum’s lap years later?”

That day, several children were playing with their parents in the garden. I was impressed by the question and felt that I was living through a unique moment. I replied: “Of course I do”. Soon after, she says to me: “Well, look, I don’t remember being on my mother’s lap”. Thus began a dialogue that would constitute the beginning of a journey of experiences and writing, which would lead me to the publication of my first book of chronicles.

From this unsuspected and unlikely conversation on a garden bench, the book “The Yellow Notebook” was born. Written by hand for a year, these chronicles were the inspiration for the creation of my writing brand: “Yellow Bird”. Like everything in life, events happen naturally and are umbilically linked to each other. This is the case.

I leave you with the text on the back cover that summarizes well the content of the book.

An unlikely conversation on a garden bench in Lisbon, in November 2020, gave rise to the chronicle book The Yellow Notebook.

This notebook tells the life of a neighborhood in the middle of a pandemic, having been born in a completely unpredictable way after its Author was talking to a lady on a park bench. Her remarkable life story and tribulations are contained here in these pages that contain so many other ridiculous and unprecedented episodes, which took place in a Lisbon neighborhood, during the most critical phase of COVID-19. Curious and unlikely encounters, from pages of diaries found scattered on the street, to honest confidences from people who found here a refuge for their thoughts.

The Yellow Notebook is the first book of chronicles by Maria Inês Rebelo and promises to capture the reader’s attention, from beginning to end. 

If you’re interested in reading the book, you can buy it HERE in the online shop.