130. Stephanie Gou recommends “I Beat the Nightmare Monsters with 32 Farts”

Posted on April 10, 2021 by helenwanglondon

Stephanie Gou has written two reviews for us before, about Cao Wenxuan’s Bronze and Sunflower, and Dragonfly Eyes. She also runs The Lit-Up Mandarin Book Group (小桔灯云书房) for families of Chinese communities in the UK. She told us about a Chinese picture book that had all the children giggling from first page to last, including those who know only a few words in Mandarin. We asked her to tell us about her book club and about this hilarious picture book. [We love that the name of the book club refers to Bing Xin’s 冰心 famous story, The Little Orange Lantern, and to lighting up the children’s interest!]

Stephanie, please tell us about the Lit-Up Mandarin Book Group

The Lit-Up Mandarin Book Club is a COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown “legacy”. It was set up in September 2020 to connect book-loving individuals/communities in the UK, support Chinese-English bilingual families and empower children and young adults who enjoy exploring the world via books. We meet up via zoom every week to share stories live. During the weekdays of the week-long half-term holiday and school lockdown, we ran a few workshops for EYFS and KS2 children respectively. We believe in child-led learning and there are interactive opportunities for children to discuss the story in both anguages. We have shared about 90 books so far, most of which are recommended and selected by the children. Our events are free and open to everyone, although we have some strict rules for e-safety and copyright protection. First, video/audio recordings in any format are prohibited. We request that all participants keep their cameras on – if a child feels shy, they can position their camera to show part of their face without having to make eye contact. This is especially important for us, the story-telling mums, as it allows us to observe if the children are fully engaged or not, and where we can improve in the future. We also limit participants to a reasonable number for the same reason.

Community involvement and a round-table approach (rather than a pyramid) is another key value we promote. We have a rota within the regular members, so that everyone can have a go. We started with grown-ups telling the stories, and the children (aged 5-9) joined in gradually. This approach distinguishes us from the traditional weekend Chinese schools. We share interesting Chinese picture books for enjoyment and friendship rather than learning in an adult-led environment.

“I beat the nightmare monsters with 32 farts” 我用32个屁打败了睡魔怪 written by Peng Yi 彭懿, illustrated by Tian Yu 田宇, and published by JieLi Publishing House 接力出版社, 2019. ISBN 978-7-5448-6001-7

What’s the story in this picture book?

“I beat the nightmare monsters with 32 farts is about a young boy who has the same nightmare night after night. He’s scared, but also embarrassed to keep asking if he can sleep in his Mum’s bed, so he decides it’s time to tackle the situation and beat the monsters. His methods are ingenious and hilarious: he wears his trainers in bed, so as to run faster in his dreams. He takes a torch to bed, to scare the monsters with bright lights. He takes a horrible smelling durian to bed, to use as a stink bomb to scare away the monsters. Finally, he beats the nightmare monster with 32 farts. The book is filled with brightly coloured monsters chasing or being chased. There are all kinds of silly, funny things that make eight-year-olds roll about giggling.

If you can manage to stop laughing, you might detect a reassuring message about tackling something you’re scared of. You might have to try a few different approaches, which might not work out as you imagine, but if you keep going and don’t give up, you never know what might happen!

Is farting a big thing in Chinese picture books?

Not at all! This is the first homegrown picture book that breaks the taboo of toilet humour. Although pre-schoolers tend to find anything to do with bottoms, poo, farting and toilets humorous, toilet humour was shunned (pooh-poohed!) in traditional society, where a Confucian upbringing focused on appropriate behaviour from an early age. “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.” (The Analects of Confucius)

More recently, though, new parents born in the 1970s and 1980s, who had a better education than their parents, sought to educate themselves about parenting, and read up on parenting-related subjects, such as psychology, and learned, for example, about Freud’s 5 stages of psychosexual development, which explains why children find toilet humour so fascinating.

*The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew it Was None of His Business* 是谁嗯嗯在我的头上 by Werner Holzwarth , illus. Wolf Erlbruch, translated from the German by Fang Suzhen 方素珍. English: ISBN 978-1856021012 Chinese: ISBN 978-7543464629

That made it more acceptable for parents to buy picture books on this topic. At first, they bought foreign picture books translated into Chinese. An early favourite was The Little Mole Who Knew it Was None of His Business, a funny book with facts about animal poo, that met the needs of Chinese parents – it was international, translated from another language, with educational content – and it met the children’s need for enjoyment.

However, few Chinese writers attempted to engage with toilet humour – perhaps they didn’t want to, or didn’t know how to. On 1 April 2019, Peng Yi broke the mould, and published his book “I beat the nightmare monsters with 32 farts”.

In addition to breaking the taboo on toilet humour, this book made another breakthrough – that of entertainment over education. In China, education is a priority, and formal education has always been rather didactic – typically, the teacher or senior person teaches, and the learner listens and learns. But in this book the silliness comes to the fore, and the message is in the background. When adults read this book with a child, they cannot expect the child to learn very much. They must listen with great patience, just as they have to listen to all the imaginary stories made up by children in this age.

Do you think it was daring of the publisher to go ahead with this book?

Jieli Publishing House tested it before they published it! They invited a group of pre-schoolers to take part in a survey called What Scares Children? As a result, the 32 nightmare monsters are distorted versions of familiar objects in children’s daily life: for example, a hairy spider, a nasty rat, a loud thunder, a mirror, granny’s false teeth, an alarm clock, and a toothbrush with strong-flavoured toothpaste.

Everyday objects can be nightmare monsters

Grown-ups might not understand the humour in this book, but children certainly do. Primary-school age readers in the Lit-up Mandarin Book Club LOVE it. Even those who don’t understand very much Mandarin giggle from the first page to the last. The publisher was clever to get exactly the right silliness for the target audience!

What has been the response to this book in China?

It’s been astonishing! A funny story loved by children doesn’t guarantee sales in China. Most books are purchased by grown-ups as gifts for children, because most bookstores, particularly in small towns, don’t normally welcome young readers to sit down and read. And, children’s libraries are not easy to access due to location, restricted opening hours and stock availability. However, there is a demand for high-quality picture books, which is met through commercial reading clubs, or subscription libraries, catering for child readers.

This is how “I beat the nightmare monsters with 32 farts” became so popular in China. A successful marketing strategy in 2019 resulted in more than 60,000 copies being sold. A week prior to the book launch, it was made available to buyers through the e-commerce company YourBay Growth Club, and 20,000 copies were sold that week! The audio version, available from the YourBay Picture Book Reading Club for one week, was downloaded more than 130,000 times. To date, sales have reached 110,000 copies, a record-breaking number for a homegrown picture book for pre-schoolers in China. Jieli’s experience with “I beat the nightmare monsters with 32 farts” provides a good business model for those seeking to enter the market.

On a personal level, I hope that parents who laugh together with their children when reading this book can learn to appreciate that reading is not just for education, but also for pleasure. I would love to translate this book into English!

You can follow or contact Stephanie:

through her blog – www.stephaniegou.uk
on Twitter – @Stephanieyaogou
on Wechat – StephanieYaoGou

129. Interview with author-illustrator Xiong Liang

Posted on April 2, 2021 by 陈敏捷

Our recent post about international collaborations featured the book Nian and the Boy, written by Belgian author Wally De Doncker and illustrated by Chinese author-illustrator Xiong Liang 熊亮. We were delighted that they both agreed to be interviewed, to talk about their own work and their collaboration, and thank them both for taking the time to answer our questions. You can read Helen’s interview with Wally here. This is my interview with Xiong Liang.

Xiong Liang is an unassuming person. We had arranged to hold the interview online, and two minutes after we had agreed to meet, I heard him say hello, then saw him appear on screen, still in his winter coat, which he hadn’t had time to take off. He told me that the taxi driver had taken the wrong road, not once, but three times. When the car started going over a bridge, Xiong Liang had to ask the driver to stop and drop him right there. Then he’d run more than a kilometre back to his studio without stopping to catch his breath.

Xiong Liang in front of a large painting of deep, dense forest – a scene from his new picture book series *Nick the Knight* 游侠小木客

Xiong Liang, at the beginning of the 21^st century you were the first Chinese children’s book writer to use the picture book format to create children’s books, and you quickly achieved success. At the time, picture books were still new and foreign, in China, and did not really appeal to consumers. But you had the courage to keep trying, and in 2005 your Little Stone Lion was the first Chinese picture book to achieve success internationally, in an English edition published by Heryin Books and distributed in the USA. What was it that drew you to picture books in the first place? Was there a particular book that opened your mind to this form of expression, left a deep impression, and inspired you to try to create your own?

I started out as an illustrator. Back then, books with colour illustrations were considered luxury items, and in places like Shanghai, where there was more disposal income, beautiful illustrations went down well. I started out illustrating children’s classics, which would be reprinted within the month, or even the week.

*Don Quixote*, colour illustration by Xiong Liang, first published in 2003.

By 2002-2003, there were picture books circulating in China. I think I came across an English picture book, I can’t even remember what it was about, but I learned the standard picture book form from that book, I mean, the usual 32-page format. I became interested in this particular form of expression, and quite naturally started making picture books. I was born in 1975, and our parents’ generation, well, their cultural life was rather monotone. But when I was growing up, the country’s politics, economics and culture were going through all kinds of massive changes. I think there are lot of creative people in China who like me were born in the 1970s, who have a burning desire not to be like our parents’ generation, but to do some things for ourselves, to create for ourselves, and whether it’s music or video, or some other form, it’s very charged. I chose to express myself through picture books.

I started working on my first book The Little Stone Lion in 2003. Using the standard picture book format, I made 16 spreads. The Little Stone Lion was about my memories, but I couldn’t start by telling young readers “There’s a little stone lion in my home town, that I have deep feelings for, that I have wonderful memories of” or something like that, because that kind of writing is for grown-ups.

In picture books, characters usually move around, but the little stone lion is motionless. How do you portray such a character?

So, I changed the lens range. Changing the distance altered the size, which meant that I was able to play a game with my young readers. In the first spread, “I am a guardian spirit of a little town”, the stone lion is bigger than everything else. So, the reader’s response is “Wow, that’s a massive guardian spirit.”

In the second spread, “I am the only stone lion in this little town”, the lion is even larger, and takes up half the spread.

In the third spread, the only stone lion in the town takes up the whole spread.

It’s only in the fourth spread that you discover the stone lion is actually smaller than the cat. The illusion was created by playing with the focal distance of the lens.

After making The Little Stone Lion, I had a totally new understanding of picture books. A picture books has to have a concept and inspiration, a graphic structure and poetic language. It can be a lot of fun interacting with children. I’m a quiet person and am not very good at chatting with children, but I find that if there are a lot of children making a lot of noise, all I have to do is take out a book and start telling the story in it. Every turn of the page and twist in the story brings a happy squeal of delight.

Actually, I wasn’t very successful at first. The books I had illustrated sold quite well, and I was still in demand. But when I started creating my own picture books, people stopped asking for me. I was very struck by this. “It will be lonely up there,” they said, “higher notes means fewer singers”. In other words, if I went for higher art, I wouldn’t be popular in art terms or commercial terms. But I had an idea. Back then, some picture books had been introduced in China, and there were Jimmy Liao’s books, and once these new genres were published, more people would start to make these genres. The form might be new, but once there were influential authors working in these forms, and books had been published, everyone would take them for granted, and accept them as normal. I thought that if I could make ten picture books, everyone would know that there was such things as Chinese picture books. And if ten books wasn’t enough to catch their attention, then I’d make twenty.

The Little Stone Lion was first published in Taiwan in 2005, which was useful for promoting it. Two years later, in 2007, it was published on the mainland. There was no feedback, until one day, someone asked me to take part in a picture book event. I was painting in my studio at the time, in my paint-spattered, crumpled trousers. I thought it was just a gathering for chit-chat, so I went. I suddenly discovered that picture books were really popular, and that everyone there was interested in picture books, and had started to take them seriously. It had taken me almost twenty picture books to get published, and they are long sellers rather than bestsellers.

*Kitchen God* 《灶王爷》 first published in 2007

*The Peking Opera Cats and Wu Song’s Fight Against the Tiger* (《京剧猫之武松打虎》连环画出版社, 2008)

You collaborated with the Belgian author Wally De Doncker on the book Nian and the Boy 年和男孩. You have also written and illustrated your own picture book Little Nian Monster 小年兽. How are these two books different? What was your first response when you read the story Wally De Doncker had written? Did you each work completely separately and independently on the book, or was it more of a collaborative process? How did you deal with any differences of opinion?

*Little Nian Monster* (or *Nian the New Year Monster*) by Xiong Liang. Tianjin People’s Press, 2016. (《小年兽》天津人民出版社, 2016)

My picture book Little Nian Monster was based on the traditional Chinese story, in which a monster called Nian comes once a year to try and hurt us, and we scare it off with firecrackers and such-like. The message is that “if it’s not one of us, it must be out to get us”. I don’t agree with this otherness, and was trying to think why the Nian monster still comes? Was there something painful for him about New Year?

I think of New Year as an opportunity to renew ourselves. We all wish for a better new year, yet what’s more important than wishing for more money is relationships with our friends and community. In the picture book, a lonely person is swallowed up in the bad mood that represents the Nian monster, but the story doesn’t end there. I goad the young reader and say, “This outcome is terrible! You don’t want to end up like this! So let’s do it again.” Then, I’ll tell the same part of the story with the opposite mood: when the lonely person is proactive about greeting everyone, his mood shifts in a positive direction, and eventually affects even the terrible Nian monster, and it turns into a lovely New Year.

In Wally De Doncker’s story Nian and the Boy, the place where the monster lives is invaded by humans who keep breeding, and the cherries that the monster loves to eat are harvested by the humans. Eventually, the monster is driven into the lake, but it still wants to eat cherries, so it comes back every year in the cherry season. It finds itself at war with the humans, and is always beaten back by the humans’ fences, fireballs and all kinds of injuries. Only one little boy shares his cherries with the monster and protects it.

I met Wally when he was the President of IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People). We worked independently, and he said I could interpret the story however I liked.

When Zhang Mingzhou 张明舟, who took over from Wally as President of IBBY, introduced this book to me, I happened to be at a friend’s farm in Canada. My friend is a scientist, and we were out every day, working on the land, going to the farmers’ market to sell vegetables, and buy fruit. The produce at the farmers’ market is grown from heirloom seeds. I bought a punnet of dark cherries, and the taste was so strong. We weren’t far from an Indian reservation. Inside the reservation the land was naturally uncultivated, whereas everywhere outside the reservation was kept artificially neat and tidy. I went to their bar, and saw tall, silent Indians smoking. Based on this experience, I read Nian and the Boy as a story about native peoples and intruders who take their land and resources.

Xiong Liang’s Nian monsters take their color palettes from Dunhuang murals.

An alternative cover for a foreign language edition of *Nian and the Boy* features a rainbow

Another cover of the book, for a foreign language edition of Nian and the Boy, merges artistic elements of Chinese and Western culture. Here, Xiong Liang uses the rainbow – the symbol of contract in The Bible – as a metaphor for agreements to repair relationships between indigenous peoples and the governments of those who occupied their lands.

Which of your picture books have you found the most exciting and satisfying to work on?

*Moon, Moon, Won’t You Stop* ed. by Jiang Yuan and Xiong Liang. Zhejiang Juvenile and Children Publishing House, 2021. (《月亮月亮停一停》江渊、熊亮编. 浙江少年儿童出版社, 2021)

Moon, Moon, Won’t you Stop, a book that I co-edited, was illustrated by young readers themselves. It’s a story about the moon, and weaves together the famous Tang dynasty poem “Spring river blossom on a moonlit night” 春江花月夜 (a very beautiful and evocative poem of yearning, by Zhang Ruoxu 張若虛, c.660-c.720) and the story of a little bear floating on the river, and missing its mother.

*Nick the Knight* series by Xiong Liang. Tianjin People’s Press, 2019- (《游侠小木客》系列, 熊亮著绘. 天津人民出版社, 2019-)

Then there is the “Nick the Knight” series that I have just finished. It took me three years to write the series. It’s actually a novel, but split into six books with illustrations on every page. The story takes place in the Peach Blossom Spring 桃花源 (the fabled land of harmony in Tao Yuanming’s 陶淵明 famous essay, written in 421), and involves a variety of ethnic groups and beliefs. A good fairy tale has a belief system and social structure as metaphor and support, echoing reality. I am keen to do more of this kind of work.

[Minjie’s note: the title of the series 游侠小木客 can be loosely translated as “The Knight Errant Woody” or “Little Man of the Forest, the Knight Errant,” which almost conjures up a shadow of Don Quixote, the titular character of the classic Xiong illustrated years ago.]

Could you tell us about some of the illustrated books that had a strong influence on you?

As a boy, I spent a lot of time looking at books with visual content, for example, books that discussed Chinese painting. I liked the work of Xiao Yuncong 萧云从 (1596-1673) of the late Ming/early Qing, Gu Kaizhi 顾恺之 of the Eastern Jin, and Guan Xiu 贯休 (832-912) of the Five Dynasties – these artists’ work is so strange, and it had an influence on me, which probably explains why my books don’t sell particularly well. I especially like the work of William Blake, and absorbed some of his artistic style – the colours in my work are quite strong and dark.

As for literary works, I still enjoy Ye Junjian’s translations of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. However, I tend to prefer the less well-known stories, like “The Shoes of Fortune.” There is a lot of mud in his stories, so I imagined Denmark would be a dark and muddy place. But when I visited Denmark, the colours there were so bright and lively, and completely different from how I had imagined it as a child.

I grew up in a multi-cultural family, and I believe in gods and spirits, and came into contact with Buddhism and Christianity. So I also read Kierkegaard (Søren Aabye Kierkegaard) and Christian philosophy, which is part of the faith. This Eastern and Western thinking is intertwined and reflected in my work.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

When we read stories from other cultures, it’s not out of rabid curiosity. When we read other people’s culture, we see ourselves from a different angle. We all need to discover ourselves from new perspectives. With new discoveries every day we find new possibilities and will not be fettered.

There is a sense of homogeneity about many Chinese illustrators’ works. Everyone is communicating on the same platform and their styles converge. We need to look around us and notice what’s local and unique. It’s crucial that our artistic creations are diverse.

[Thanks to Helen for translating this interview]

128. Interview with author Wally De Doncker about his collaboration with Chinese illustrators

Posted on April 2, 2021 by helenwanglondon

Wally De Doncker is a Belgian author of children’s books – including two collaborations with Chinese illustrators – and a very active person in the world of children’s literature. Until recently he was the president of IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young Readers, 2014-2018. He very kindly agreed to an interview with us. Thank you, Wally!

Wally De Doncker 2021 © Michiel Devijver, of Iedereen Leest (please do not use this photograph without permission)

[We also interviewed Xiong Liang, who illustrated one of Wally’s books, and asked about his experience of the collaboration. You can read Minjie’s interview with Xiong Liang here]

Wally, please tell us about yourself. What would you like our readers to know about you?

Already as a young child, I wanted to change things. I organized an environmental group for kids from my neighbourhood so we could protect nature. In my late teens I started a campaign with a number of friends because at the time, the children in my village had nowhere to go to relax and have fun. When I was studying to be a teacher, I organized joint activities with the female students at the teacher-training institute for girls. At the time, Flanders was a conservative place, and something like this was not yet self-evident. As a teacher, I fought to give teachers a say in school policy, because at the time this was virtually unheard of. I was elected chairperson of our regional teachers’ association, and this put me in a position to make a great many changes. Together with my wife, I later campaigned for co-education. We fought long and hard for this. Looking back, it’s incredible that even in the Belgian education system of the 1990s, girls were not considered to be equal to boys.

I have continued this fight through my involvement with IBBY [International Board on Books for Young Readers]. Sadly, there are still countries that consider girls to be inferior. There are still countries where more than 90 per cent of girls and women are unable to read or write. I find it inconceivable that my children and grandchildren could be discriminated against based solely on their gender. As IBBY president (2014-2018) I couldn’t just sit back and watch when I heard that girls are not allowed to read. IBBY is a non-profit organization which represents an international network of people from all over the world who are committed to bringing books and children together. Promoting international understanding between people remains IBBY’s focus. Every child everywhere in the world must have access to books and the opportunity to become a reader in the fullest sense. IBBY sees this as a fundamental right and the doorway to empowerment for every child. It is also my personal goal. A person who has access to reading has the opportunity to learn, to enjoy and to shape his or her own future. Whatever, however and wherever people read, one thing is clear: the power that books hold within them can change the path of a life.

In 2003, Kim Reynolds invited me to go to the University of Roehampton to give a talk about my literary work to leading international authorities on children’s books. The philosophical and surrealistic nature of my picture books had already drawn the attention of a number of such experts. To this very day, the interest and encouragement I received there from literary scholars like Kim Reynolds, Lissa Paul, Rod McGillis, and Lynne Vallone continue to serve as an inspiration to me as a writer.

From 2003 to 2009 I was a member of the editorial board of the critical journal of children’s literature, The Lion and the Unicorn which is published in the USA.

*Ahum*, *Het begint ergens*, *Ik mis me* (image source: telenet.be)

International museums have also drawn attention to my books: the Labyrinth Children’s Museum (Berlin) has focused on Ahum and the Dutch Children’s Books Museum on Het begint ergens (“It Starts Somewhere”). Ik mis me (“I miss me”) has received attention in France at many national exhibitions and philosophy conferences. In 2013 and 2017 I was shortlisted (one of three writers) for the Belgian SABAM Awards for Children’s and Youth Literature.

As a song writer I work together with different Belgian composers.

The film Us Three / Nous Trois (2019, Blauwhuis productions, Ghent) was inspired by my book Ik Mis Me and was awarded Best Film at the Fic Autor Filmfestival in Mexico 2019 and the Bronze Award at the Queen Palm International Film Festival 2019 in Florida (USA).

You’ve partnered with two Chinese artists: Xu Kaiyun 徐开云 and Xiong Liang 熊亮.
Could you tell us how these projects came about and how they developed?

*Billie’s Factory* 比利的工厂, by Wally De Doncker 瓦力德邓肯 (Belgium), illus. Xu
Kaiyun 徐开云 (China), 2015. English edition published by Benchmark Education
Company, 2016

From the start I applauded the unique initiative of CCPPG in which authors and illustrators from different continents collaborate on universal themes. It is a big step to publish a Chinese artist who has illustrated a story by an author from a different culture, or to publish the works of Chinese authors with illustrations by artists from different continents.

My books were already known in China. In 2004 my picture book “I wish I were a doll” was published in Chinese. It caught the attention of the Chinese reader. I remember that the book was mentioned in a list of the top 100 books in Chinese education. A Chinese reviewer wrote: “This book allows children to consider a more complex view of life. It reminds them, for example, that they should care about lonely old people in society’s hidden corners… As a person, what is the most valuable thing in our lives? As months and years pass, what will remain in our hearts and minds as a ‘never disappearing’ memory?”

Billie’s Factory is an autobiographical story. My father owned a small contracting firm. He spent a lot of his free time in his hangar.. If you were looking for him, you were certain to find him there. Many years after he died, the hangar burnt down. I witnessed it. Within the flames, I saw the memories of my childhood. The building was burnt to ashes but the stories of my father live on through this book. Xu Kaiyun’s illustrations show perfectly how a collaboration between artists from different cultures can be enriching. He asked me for pictures about old factories and familiarized himself with street scenes in Belgium to create mental images of the setting. He used a lot of warm colors to make the artwork child-friendly and to illustrate the heart-warming effects of nostalgia.

The book attracted the attention of many Chinese magazines. It has become an international success. After the original Chinese version it has been (or will be) translated into English, Dutch, Arabic and Indonesian.

Following the success of Billie’s Factory, CCPPG asked me to deliver a new manuscript, this time inspired by a traditional Chinese story. This was a challenge. I read many different classic Chinese stories and eventually I chose to work on the story of Nian.

“Nian and the Boy” 年和男孩, by Wally De Doncker 瓦力·德·邓肯 (Belgium), illus. Xiong Liang 熊亮 (China), 2019 // *Nian*, by Wally de Doncker, illus. by Xiong Liang (Leonon Media, 2019 – image source: bol.com)

While reading the story of Nian in different Chinese versions, I was faced with some difficult questions and thoughts. In my previous books (6 of them were published in Chinese by Shandong Publishing House in 2018) I was always looking for the why of things. My picture book “I Miss Me” is about a boy who looks at himself in the mirror. He asks himself what the world would be like if he had not been born. What would his mother be like? What would the house be like? His cuddle? Would the walls miss him? The film version of the book (“Nous Trois”, Blauwhuis Productions, Gent, Belgium, 2018) follows the same track and shows how we all influence each other just by our existence. It indicates which traces we leave in our life and the life of others. My book Ik ben heel veel liefde (“I am lots of love”, Davidsfonds/ Infodok, Antwerpen (Belgium), 2017) indicates the traces of love our ancestors have given us over thousands of years. The awareness of being a product of all the people before you is therefore also a very hopeful message. The book was the theme of different Belgian literature festivals.

I tried to explain the why of things in “Nian and the Boy”. It was something I did not find in the traditional versions of Nian. I also tried to empathize with the emotions of Nian. Why is the Nian monster so vindictive? How would I feel if my living space was taken away from my parents and me? How would I react to that? How do certain traumas extend into a life? Why does Nian want to destroy the villages in a bloodthirsty way?

In the traditional Nian story the old man emerges as a Deus Ex Machina. How does the old man know that the monster is afraid of the three elements: fire, noise and the red color? This knowledge must come from somewhere. Why is the old man in solidarity with the monster that destroys villages? There must be a deeper cause for this.

Everything happens for a reason. Everything has a ground. Sometimes it’s easy to explain or to find out. Sometimes we have to go back to our deepest selves: to our unconscious. I tried to search for the answer within myself. I think that the old man and the monster had met before. There was a certain unspoken connection between them. I found the explanation in the shared childhood of the old man and the Nian monster.

The book got a lot of attention. It has been reviewed and praised by many reviewers, including in my own country.

Could you tell us about the reception of these books in China, in Belgium, and elsewhere?

I have been lucky enough to observe how Chinese schools (in Shanghai) work with my books. For me personally it is heartening to see how my readers on the other side of the world love my stories. Billie’s Factory, for example, is an autobiographical story about myself
as a child. The kid I was then could never have imagined this book might fascinate children in China. It’s almost a philosophical thought.

During a seminar about my books at the Beijing Book Fair in August 2016, I had the opportunity to talk to a large audience of readers about the origin and meaning of the manuscript “Nian and the boy”. The enthusiasm of the audience towards my version of Nian was quite striking. The moderator, from a university in Beijing, even tried to come up with a scientific meaning behind my book. The audience was very curious about how I had come up with my interpretation. Questions like these may be the ultimate proof of how different cultures are able to enrich one another. Also, in Bologna, everyone who had read it praised the manuscript. My Chinese publishers, editors and literary agent have a very professional
approach, which I appreciate.

In 2020 “Nian and the Boy” was nominated for different awards and the book received an “Outstanding Work” award by the Chinese Institute for Picture Book Research and the Fu Lanya Picture Book Museum.

During a lecture tour in Belgium earlier this year, I read Billie’s Factory in my own language whilst projecting the illustrations on a big screen. By doing so, I could experience how my Flemish readers reacted to this cultural teamwork. The surprising illustrations by Xu Kaiyun were welcomed with open arms. Although in Belgium, our young readers are confronted with many different styles of illustrations, this book was different for them. The biggest difference was the way in which the Chinese characters were depicted. The murals of the tortoise and the cat on the facades of the houses in Brussels differed from anything they had seen before. Some of the faces of the employees looked East Asian to them. Most of the reactions to the book were positive.

This is what Belgian reviewer Bart Medaer wrote about the Dutch version of “Nian and the Boy” ((Magazine Pluizer): “Breathtaking, beautiful, a pearl… Once there were mainly monsters and not so many human beings. Here, a family of monsters – a mom, a dad and their child Nian – live in nature. Nian loves cherries and when the cherries are ripe, daddy crawls into the tree and makes cherries rain. Daddy, Mom and Nian are then super cheerful and happy. One day the peace (and silence) is disturbed and a family of people comes to live nearby. They build a house and start breeding animals and plants. The peaceful family of monsters retreats to the mountains and they accept that people take up more and more space and that the cherry trees must also be shared. But will there be enough cherries for both families? What happens if more and more people come? How will they share the cherries?

“This is an incredible ‘outside the comfort zone’ book. The East Asian tinted drawings are powerful, expressive, rough and catchy. The first feeling is not comfortable. After the first few pages I thought it was breathtakingly beautiful. A pearl, art to really enjoy. The story itself is catchy and known. Who enters which world? The monstrous creatures interact with the equally “amorphous” human beings. The tension between the two clans results in aggression. The monster family is being repressed. The relationship with today is clear: more and more walls are being built, we no longer understand each other and people are increasingly excluded. Fortunately, there is the beautiful relationship between Nian and a human child. The lyrics are whimsical and do not follow a line. The story is a fluid succession of colors, figures, images and texts. The book reads smoothly and gives peace, despite the irregular design. This is an extraordinary, overwhelming and monstrous book.”

Do you have any advice to share with other writers who might wish to do a similar collaboration?

Wishing is not enough, of course. I don’t know if you can do something as a writer to attract interest from foreign publishers. Write good books and try to be authentic, I think. And try to be published by good publishers in your own country and work together with a good international literary agent. Be open-minded to the international children’s books world. Open your own borders. It is a process, you can’t force it. You also need a bit of luck to be selected by foreign publishers. Your book has to be different from other books.

During my reading tour in Japan, literature experts told me that my philosophical thinking is similar with eastern philosophy. I never heard this before, maybe this is the trigger. I don’t know.

Could you tell us about your own childhood reading?

As a child I read a lot of Flemish children’s comics. They were very popular in that time.
My favourite children’s book was The Voyage to the Moon by Jules Verne. As a child I read books everywhere: in my bedroom, living room, bathroom, on the veranda, even in the car… I still do! It hasn’t changed.

My passion for children’s and young adult literature emerged when I was still a very young child. Unfortunately until I was ten years old, my village didn’t have a library. Once in a while my mother would buy a children’s book from the newsagent’s. Or our schoolteacher would place a number of books on the steps and we would then be allowed to pick one out to take home with us. At the end of my fourth school year a tiny library finally opened up, and that’s when the world opened up for me too. From then on, I could read whatever I wanted. It might be an audacious assertion, but I would state that I have become who I am today by reading many books. Books have often broadened my perspective and opened up my world.

I remember one Chinese story that I read at different times during my childhood. On my tenth birthday my mother took me to a bookshop. I was delighted that I could choose my own book. It was so special that I can even remember it now, after so many years. The title of the book was ‘The Golden Book of the World’ – it was a book with different world stories: fiction and non-fiction. I read it many times. There was a Chinese story in the book: “The little dog of the Princess of Mu”. The dog lived a luxurious life in a rich palace. He bragged to the other animals that he was the princess’s dog. However, no one paid any attention to him. One day he fled the palace. He ended up in real life. He ran through busy streets. He ran from children who wanted to catch him. He was hungry. Other dogs wanted to cheat on him. He eventually wanted to go back to the palace, but he had learned that his previous status as a princess’s dog was no longer that important. His experiences, however, were more important than anything. A story with a lesson. It is strange that I still remember it.

Website: http://users.telenet.be/wally.de.doncker1/index.html
Twitter: @donckerwally
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wally.dedoncker
Wikipedia: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_De_Doncker
Chinabook international:
http://www.chinabookinternational.org/2019/1217/229237_en.shtml
CCTSS China: http://www.cctss.org/article/headlines/1242

Read more by Wally De Doncker

How to Battle Illiteracy (ALMA) – https://astridlindgrenmemorialaward.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/wally-de-doncker-on-how-to-battle-illiteracy/
A Glimpse of the CLISS 2 – The Children’s Literature Summer School and Symposium, Roehampton, 2003 (The Lion and the Unicorn, April 2005)
Closing speech as IBBY Preside nt

Chinese books for young readers

children's and YA books created in Chinese

Monthly Archives: April 2021

130. Stephanie Gou recommends “I Beat the Nightmare Monsters with 32 Farts”

129. Interview with author-illustrator Xiong Liang

128. Interview with author Wally De Doncker about his collaboration with Chinese illustrators