Yen Press has announced the acquisition of Keiko Tobe's award-winning With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child (Hikari to Tomoni), a 5-volume series that won the Excellence Prize at the 8th annual Japan Media Arts Festival in 2004.  The first volume in the series will be released in September with a $14.99 cover price with subsequent volumes due out at six-month intervals.

The bittersweet and heartwarming tale depicts a young mother's struggle to keep her family together and deal with the overwhelming discovery of her newborn son's autism. The manga has inspired a live action 'dorama' series that aired on Japanese TV.

The acquisition of With the Light, which is likely to be more of a succes d'estime than a best-seller, indicates that Yen Press is planning to publish a broad well-balanced range of titles including its previously announced manga from Square Enix (see 'Yen Press Details Launch Plans') and Nightschool, a potentially popular OEL series from Svetlana Chmakova, as well as manga anthology magazine, which is due out in 2008 and will feature Yen Press' growing list of properties.