75. Jennie Liu’s childhood reading in the USA, 1970s-80s

Jennie Liu’s book Girls on the Line was published earlier this month. With a target audience aged 14-18 years, it tackles some tough issues:

It is 2009 in the city of Gujiao, China: 16-year-old Luli and 17-year-old Yun, best friends, have aged out of their orphanage and are now enjoying the exhilarating independence of factory work. … Told in the first person from the two girls’ alternating points of view, readers will be drawn into their emotional lives through sharing both their quiet, day-to-day routines and the moments of high drama, all of which are direct results of policies that trapped ordinary citizens and forced them into making terrible decisions. (Kirkus Review)

Girls on the Line, by Jennie Liu (21st Century, 2018) (Image source: Amazon)

We asked Jennie about her childhood reading, and are delighted she agreed to write for us.

Jennie writes: 

My parents immigrated to the U.S. when I was in the womb. During my upbringing, they were busy getting themselves established, and we five kids were kept pretty close to home with mostly only the yard, broadcast television, and books from the library with which to entertain ourselves.

Jennie Liu, school photo, grade 1

As a very young child one book I vividly remember pulling off the shelf was The Five Chinese Bothers, an American retelling of a Chinese folktale, by Claire Huchet Bishop and illustrated by Kurt Wiese. I remember being excited to find a book with the word Chinese in the title. I enjoyed the strange story, but was bewildered and felt somewhat ill-at-ease about the yellow characters with long braided hair. I didn’t know anyone who looked like that! The book was first published in 1938 and is a classic in the States, but has also been controversial for racial stereotyping due to those illustrations.

The Five Chinese Brothers, by Claire Huchet Bishop and Kurt Wiese (Image source: Amazon)

That was the only book I remember from early childhood with any speck of Chinese culture. Back then cultural diversity was not a concern. The books I read came from the library in a rural town in Florida near my parents’ workplace. The library was in a huge, creaky Victorian house. My siblings and I were allowed to go there on Saturdays and in the summer while my parents worked, and we would browse the young people’s section, which only had about five or six shelves in an otherwise vast empty room. The library was usually empty except for the two staff members who stayed in the office downstairs, and my siblings and I would camp out on the vinyl pillows for hours. I read whatever they had, mostly popular American authors like Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, and Lois Duncan, as well as whatever classics were required by the private school we attended.

Summer reading lists were issued from school, but the lists allowed for choices with an eye to developing an enjoyment for reading. In the ninth grade, Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier, was one of suggested novels that I was able to find in the adult section of my musty library. The novel, also published in 1938, follows an insecure, young English woman who marries an older, wealthy estate owner and is thrust into his gentrified world.  She feels to be in the shadow of his beautiful, competent, deceased first wife until she learns a terrible secret which wakes her from her own illusions and compels her to essentially grow up.

Perhaps, since so much of teenage life in America is about trying to fit in, I felt a particular resonance with shy protagonist in Rebecca. The private school I attended had only about four non-white families in the entire school, and I felt my cultural difference distinctly. Like I said, cultural diversity and inclusion was not matter of importance back then, but thank goodness that has changed, especially in publishing and in schools (at least the public ones my children attend).  I am thrilled that my sons have a seeming endless supply of novels by and about people of so many different backgrounds who are facing all sorts of issues. It’s an exciting time to be a young reader.

***

Exciting, indeed! On Jennie’s blog jennieliuwrites.com, she has a section titled “Amazing Time for Chinese Lit“, in which she lists the books she’s read, and the ones that on her To Read list. Thanks, Jennie!

 

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74. Theresa Munford, Chinese teacher

Dr Theresa Munford, probably the most experienced teacher of Chinese to secondary school students in the UK, retired this summer. Her 8-lesson blog on teaching Chinese literature in the classroom – “Teaching The Ventriloquist’s Daughter” – has just been published by The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing. We’re delighted she agreed to an interview with us.

Theresa Munford

Hi Theresa, please tell us about yourself! What would you like our readers to know?

I took what used to be the traditional route into Chinese, learning it at Durham University in the 1970s, where there was a heavy emphasis on classical Chinese and not a great deal of modern spoken language.  That nurtured in me a love of Chinese language and literature but left me speechless when I finally got to China in 1979 as a British Council student! I went on to do a PhD at the Australian National University in Chinese history and then lived and worked in Hong Kong for many years, mainly as a business journalist.  It was only when I moved back to the UK that I trained to be a teacher and found my spoken Chinese improved as I taught it. I was lucky to get involved in teaching Chinese when it was starting to take off as a secondary school language about 15 years ago and it has been wonderful watching the pedagogy and resources improve year on year as the numbers studying it continue to grow.

Why Chinese? 

A childhood obsession with things to do with China, I think, and also a love of languages.

Could you tell us about the teaching of Chinese in schools? In the past Chinese was taught as a “community language” rather than a “modern foreign language”. Could you tell us how the change came about and the impact of that change?

The last decade has seen a huge growth in Chinese teaching in schools to non-native speakers   At first it was often extra-curricular,  with schools offering after school or lunch time Chinese language clubs.  Students could often do low level qualifications (such as OCR and AQA Breakthrough).  Gradually schools started to get braver about offering on-timetable lessons and higher level exams like GCSE.  There were and still are obstacles: for example,

• Financial: Small classes can’t be justified unless there are specific pots of money, like the old Specialist School funding for language specialist schools, and currently the Mandarin Excellence Programme funding. 
• Results: Schools are judged by exam results and some fear that unless high grades can be guaranteed, this might impact on their overall statistics. This is still a big problem especially because most students doing Chinese GCSE and A-Level are native speakers, who have come to study in the UK. Grade boundaries are set by algorithms that don’t take this into account so it is harder for non-native speakers to get high grades.
• Shortage of teachers: Although there is no shortage of enthusiastic native-speaker teachers, they often encounter problems with Western teaching methods and behaviour management. Huge improvements have been made in this now and schools are more and more confident that they will be able to find qualified teachers. There has also been an influx of young teachers who have learnt Chinese after living in China. Though they may not have the fluency or literacy levels of a native speaker, they bring their own experience of learning Chinese as a foreign language to their teaching.

Overall the situation has improved greatly in the last decade, and there are now so many good resources, text books, on line support and cross-cultural teacher training that the future looks bright.  Also, increasingly parents are demanding Mandarin on the curriculum and schools are responding to this.

Another change has been the government policy that language teaching should include reading literature in the language being learned. As a teacher, how have you responded to this? Have you noticed any changes in students as a result of this policy?

Personally I welcome this.  I did the old fashioned language A-levels where we read lots of literature and I feel my education was enriched by it.  Many of the books and authors we studied have remained important to me throughout my life.

 I appreciate that some teachers feel that it is an extra burden in an already crowded curriculum but I think that if taught with imagination it makes language learning less dry and broadens the general education of our students. 

With Chinese, we can’t access a great deal of literature because, compared to European languages, our students’ reading levels  are  lower.  But by introducing tiny bits of authentic texts and encouraging them to read in translation, hopefully we can achieve something.  And of course, Chinese poetry is succinct and fascinating and offers a huge amount of imaginative potential, especially in terms of character recognition and cultural learning.

It’s too early to say how this new emphasis will impact on students.  I know from the bits and pieces I’ve done with my students, they really enjoy the challenge and the change.  And for us teachers, it gives us a chance to do something more exciting too, a bit ‘off piste’,  as a break from the humdrum curriculum requirements.  I just wish we had more time!

Could you tell us what really motivates (and demotivates) your students of Chinese? 

In schools where Chinese is optional, the students who chose it  are often already drawn to it as something different and exciting.  But even where it’s obligatory, I’ve found that students enjoy the excitement of something completely different from the languages they may have already encountered.  They feel proud that they can read and write something that their parents are unlikely to be able to do.  They get such a buzz the first time they see a Chinese character on a sign or a menu that they recognize.  

Demotivation?  Some lose heart if they think that they are not able to recognize characters or tones.   I always assure them that it takes time and practice ( I often confess that I couldn’t hear or  reproduce tones accurately for almost the first 10 years of learning Chinese!).  I use the analogy of an airplane taking off.  Learning another European language is like flying a small plane, you soon take off; learning Chinese is like a 747, it needs a longer runway, it’s all a bit slower at first but once you take off , the flight is a lot more exciting, the views a lot better!

Wall-display by Theresa Munford’s students following 8 weeks of lessons inspired by The Ventriloquist’s Daughter

If an avid secondary school reader were to ask you to recommend a few books by Chinese writers to read over the holidays, what would you recommend? And why?

My favourite is The Ventriloquist’s Daughter (LIN Man-Chiu, tr. Helen Wang). It struck such a chord with the young readers I’ve known and deals with so many issues that are important to them such as family relationships and mental health. Another one is Bronze and Sunflower (CAO Wenxuan, tr. Helen Wang) which also gives them an insight into recent Chinese history. I’m currently reading Young Babylon (LU Nei, tr. Poppy Toland) and think that would make a really interesting book for older students such as 6th-formers. It is about working as a young man in a factory in the 1990s. It’s funny, perceptive and has a lot about the anxieties of growing up and also recent Chinese history.

You’ve just retired . What now? We hope you’ll continue to be active in the field!

I’m loving being released from the daily grind of lesson planning, target setting, exam cycles and so on!  I want to do a lot more about Chinese poetry, try my hand at translating and also think of ways of making it more accessible to learners of Chinese. And I’m enjoying having time to read, there are so many interesting writers in China now to explore!

Many thanks, Theresa. We look forward to hearing more from you in the future!

 

73. Our first 72 posts!

Here’s a list of our first 72 posts! Thank you to everyone who has helped us along the way, to our guest-writers and interviewees, and, of course, to our readers!

               Images selected from posts 61-72

1. Chinese books for young readers (Sep 12, 2016)
2. Gerelchimeg Blackcrane (Sep 13, 2016)
3. Chinese children’s literature and the UK National Curriculum (Sep 14, 2016)
4. Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! (Sep 15, 2016)
5. The Reason for Being Late (Sep 16, 2016)
6. Why Translations? Don’t We ‘Already Have Chinese Stories in English’? (Sep 27, 2016)
7. A Brief History of Chinese Literature for Children, What Sells Now, and More (Oct 1, 2016)
8. The “Warring States” world of picture books … in a big Hangzhou bookshop (Oct 2, 2016)
9. Poems for Children – selected by Bei Dao (Oct 7, 2016)
10. Happy Double Ninth (Chongyang) Festival! (Oct 9, 2016)
11. Literature: Another Form of Housebuilding – Cao Wenxuan’s acceptance speech
    (Oct 14, 2016)
12. Crossing Cultures: Belle Yang, A Story of Immigration (Oct 16, 2016)
13. I am a tiger! (Oct 20, 2016)
14. Bronze and Sunflower shortlisted for the Marsh Award (Oct 24, 2016)
15. Nami Island International Picture Book Illustration Concours 2017 – shortlist (Nov 2, 2016)
16. Zhang Xinxin and Little People’s Books (Nov 3, 2016)
17. Calling them Asian-American books isn’t sufficient… (Nov 8, 2016)
18. Made in China: 10 picture books you can’t miss (Nov 13, 2016)
19. A picture’s worth a thousand words… (Nov 14, 2016)
20. Reflecting Teenagers on a Sichuanese Mirror: Yan Ge and her stories from Pingle Township (Nov 19, 2016)
21. Context and contradiction in translating Aroma’s Little Garden, by Qin Wenjun (Nov 30, 2016)
22. Jin Jin (1915-1989) (Dec 27, 2016)
23. Bing Xin and The Little Orange Lantern (Dec 29, 2016)
24. Tyrus Wong (1910-2016) and Bambi (Jan 3, 2017)
25. Yu Rong’s paper cuttings (Jan 11, 2017)
26. The Good Things That Come out of Collisions (Jan 15, 2017)
27. Helen Wang Wins the 2017 Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation (Jan 30, 2017)
28. The Ventriloquist’s Daughter: Between Fantasy and Reality – by Lin Man-chiu (Feb 23, 2017)
29. One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Social Experiment – by Mei Fong (Feb 24, 2017)
30. St Gregory’s School ‘Reading China’ book group – by Theresa Munford (Feb 25, 2017)
31. The Story of Ink and Water – by Chun Zhang (Feb 26, 2017)
32. Sister – by Peng Xuejun (Mar 5, 2017)
33. I Am Mulan (Mar 13, 2017)
34. Bronze and Sunflower – now available in the USA and Canada! (Mar 21, 2017)
35. The King of Hide-and-Seek (Apr 8, 2017)
36. Bilingual books from Candied Plums (Apr 17, 2017)
37. Chinese literature festival in London, 12-14 May (May 5, 2017)
38. The Ventriloquist’s Daughter – now available! (May 25, 2017)
39. A Tree (Jun 9, 2017)
40. Stephanie Gou on how Bronze and Sunflower opened a door to her memories (Jun 13, 2017)
41. Who is Wenzheng Fu? (Jun 18, 2017)
42. Author-illustrator Lipei Huang (Jun 25, 2017)
43. Starfish Bay Children’s Books (Jul 10, 2017)
44. “Plums” for Your Tongue: Chinese Children’s Literature for Language Learners (Jul 21, 2017)
45. The 10th National Outstanding Children’s Literature Awards, 2017 (Aug 6, 2017)
46. The Only Child, by Guojing (Aug 11, 2017)
47. CFP: Asian Festival of Children’s Content (Aug 30, 2017)
48. Little Soldier Zhang Ga (Sep 30, 2017)
49. Happy Mid-Autumn Festival 2017 (Oct 4, 2017)
50. 12 Books for the Holidays (Oct 5, 2017)
51. David Jacobson’s survey of translations of children’s and YA Literature translated from Chinese, Japanese and Korean (Oct 16, 2017)
52. List of Chinese-Themed Books for Kids and Teens – by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre (Oct 19, 2017)
53. A Cross-Cultural Conversation Between Two Master Storytellers at the 2017 USBBY Conference (Oct 27, 2017)
54. Chinese children’s and YA books, in English, 2017 (Dec 11, 2017)
55. The 2017 Bai Meigui Translation Competition is now open! (Dec 12, 2017)
56. What’s the difference between children’s books in China and the US? (Jan 7, 2018)
57. Dong Yanan’s picture books (Jan 18, 2018)
58. China Welfare Institute Publishing House: Picture Books from China, with Love & Beauty (Jan 22, 2018)
59. Interview with Chloe Garcia Roberts, translator of the picture book “Feather” by Cao Wenxuan and Roger Mello (Jan 25, 2018)
60. Getting to Know Rural Young Chinese Readers and Their World(s) (Jan 29, 2018)
61. Our first 60 posts! (Feb 4, 2018)
62. The NCTA Freeman Book Awards (Feb 6, 2018)
63. Witness China’s New Love: the Changing Landscape of Chinese Children’s Literature (Feb 14, 2018)
64. Books from Taiwan (Mar 1, 2018)
65. The Tortoise Family goes to the Sea, and Blind Little Red Riding Hood (Mar 12, 2018)
66. Children’s Books in China 2018 (and 2017) (Apr 6, 2018)
67. Chinese Dinosaurs in an English Village (May 20, 2018)
68. The Cao Wenxuan Children’s Literature Award (Jun 10, 2018)
69. Teardrops of the Christmas Tree: A Memorable Childhood Reading Experience (Jul 10, 2018)
70. Vikki Zhang, illustrator with a love of textiles and fashion (Aug 14, 2018)
71. Let’s Talk to Kids about Sex… in Chinese, Q&A with Minjie Chen (Sep 3, 2018)
72. People Reading in Chinese Art (Sep 15, 2018)

72. People reading in Chinese art

I was thinking about paintings that feature people reading. The ones that came to mind showed mostly a woman or young girl reading a book in quiet contemplation in an interior setting – private moments (perhaps voyeuristic too).  Most of these artworks feature “western” females – perhaps there’s a specific genre and scholarship on western females reading in art? But I didn’t venture much further down that route than the Wikipedia page Women reading in art, the blog Reading and Art (which has many examples), also 20 powerful paintings of parents reading to children and ART & Reading / Paintings.

I started looking for images of Chinese people reading. We had asked Zhang Xinxin if we could use her artwork of children reading on the steps of the bookshop for our banner and were delighted when she agreed. Surely there must be more?

Our banner head is an image from Zhang Xinxin’s graphic novel Pai Hua Zi and the Clever Girl

Searching online I found plenty of photographs of Chinese people reading – especially children – but I was really looking for paintings. After a while, I discovered that there are many Chinese paintings and artworks (including public sculpture) that feature people reading. I’ve pulled the images I found together as Chinese people reading  on our Pinterest page. (It wasn’t easy to give full captions for all the images – for details, follow the links on Pinterest)

“My daughter” by Chen Guangjian — 陈光健： 《我的女儿 – 写女儿山花在斗室》 1995 (Pinterest)

“San Mao reading” by Zhang Leping 张乐平：《三毛读书》   (Pinterest)

There are also themes relating to people reading, often expressed in four-character-phrase captions, with a story behind them, such as these:

Hanging books from the buffalo’s horn(s) – 《牛角挂书》(Pinterest)

“Borrowing light through a hole” by Chen Zhengming – 陈政明 : 《凿壁借光》(Pinterest)

Tying one’s hair to the rafters to stay awake – 《悬梁刺服》 (Pinterest)

If you’re feeling diligent, there’s a list of 30 more sayings here (in Chinese) .

71. Let’s Talk to Kids About Sex… in Chinese – Q&A with Minjie Chen

On 24^th August, Minjie posted a long essay on the Cotsen Library blog, titled Let’s Talk to Kids About Sex…in Chinese Too . I was keen to know more, and she kindly agreed to answer some more questions. 

We are pleased to publish this Q&A post simultaneously on the WorldKidLit blog, which was founded by Marcia Lynx Qualey to promote children’s books from around the world, designating September as World Kid Lit Month (twitter @worldkidlit #worldkidlit #worldkidlitmonth).

Q&A with Minjie

HW: What inspired (provoked/motivated) you do this research? (Perhaps it’s part of a bigger research project, or there is an existing field? Or you did it solo?)

MC: I have multiple versions of answers to this question. The longest and most complete one will need to begin with when I was five, the age I now wish I had access to the picture books I get to read today! The short answer is, I was stumped by questions from the audience when I was giving a lecture at New York University – Shanghai last fall, and that eventually led to this essay. I was talking to sophomores about using primary sources in humanities research. I mainly study children’s reading materials as a source of information for youth and one project I did was on the early history of sex education movement in Republican China. The students’ interest quickly moved from history to here and now–what sex education resources are available to Chinese children and adolescents in the 21st century? What do they teach about sex, gender, LGBTQ, pleasure, and a host of other topics? I had only meager knowledge about their questions. I was under the impression that there were a lot more translated picture books for children’s sex education than homegrown works in China. A Chinese reader series that offers sex instruction for Grades 1-6 students had attracted media attention and controversy in China. Except for a few online snapshots of illustrations from that book, I didn’t have much to say about Chinese sex education books of the 21th century.

While standing at the lectern listening to students’ thoughtful inquiries, I realized that I was just as curious as them. It would be a worthwhile project to survey the types of sex instruction books produced by Chinese writers and find out what information and messages are imparted—Are they accurate, useful, and empowering? Are there caveats readers should be aware of? For the Cotsen Children’s Library, it was a prime moment to collect the earliest picture books that China has made for young children’s sex instruction.

HW: How did you go about doing this research?

MC: This is by no means an exhaustive survey of all Chinese sex instruction books for children, but based on what the Cotsen Children’s Library was able to procure from the current book market (let’s just say that I spent quite some time poring over the Chinese site of the online retailer Amazon, doing keyword searching for “sex education” and following helpful or unhelpful leads of “Customers who bought this item also bought…”). I looked at dozens of picture books, comic books, and illustrated books, and examined dimensions that include childbirth, reproductive organs, gender roles, sex crime and prevention, and the backgrounds of the writers. I took notes from individual titles and summarized the prominent patterns I observed.

HW: In your essay you cover mainly books about babies. Is there a similar range of books about puberty, periods, early sexual stirrings/desire?

MC: Unlike picture books, which for the first time bring sex instruction to readers as young as preschoolers in China, there have been informational books about puberty intended for school students. The greatest achievement of China’s earliest sex education movement was that it made puberty and adolescence standard topics in middle school curriculum on physiology and hygiene. Sexual desire was a major topic that pioneer sex educators treated seriously, and they presented no-nonsense information to disentangle sexual instinct from shame. In fact, I have yet to find a contemporary Chinese writer as good as Zhou Jianren 周建人 (1888-1984), the most prolific voice at the dawn of China’s sex education movement, who explained human reproduction in lucid language to school children, adolescents, and adults.

Zhou Jianren tongshu [Zhou Jianren’s stories for children], Haitun chubanshe, 2013. 《周建人童书》， 海豚出版社。 2013年。

I found a wide range of topics in sex instruction books published after 2000 for teens: sexual attraction and impulse, romantic and sexual relationships, menstruation, nocturnal emissions, masturbation, hygiene, pregnancy and birth control, STD, sexual abuse and prevention, drug abuse, pimples, bras…just to give some examples. Exactly what information is given about those topics warrants another investigation.

HW: A few specific questions – is there a legal age of consent?, until what age is someone considered  a minor?, what about under-age sex?,  what about contraception? can “early developers” access contraceptives? what about education re sexually transmitted diseases?

MC: Once again I am stumped! I flipped through several informational books devoted to the prevention of sexual abuse, and couldn’t find any mention of legal ages. It is unpardonable not to share this piece of information with children and youth! As I dug into the Internet I was surprised by what I found. Chinese Criminal Law (available on the website of the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China) does not really articulate the concept of consent. In circular language, Article 236 of the Code indicates that a person who has “illicit sex” with girls under fourteen years old is guilty of raping. The official English translation (link to the Supreme People’s Court website) of the Criminal Law, in contrast, clearly states that whoever has “sexual intercourse” with a girl under the age of fourteen is guilty, and accordingly fourteen should be considered the legal age of consent in China–I applaud the sensible interpretation of the anonymous translators for closing the loophole for “licit sex” with preteen girls. (There is also a debate on removing the gender reference and making the article inclusive of child victims of all sexes, not just female ones.)

Minors are defined by Chinese Civil Law as under age eighteen.

It looks like contraceptive pills are over-the-counter medicine and available to any teenager should they muster their courage to visit a drugstore in China. Chinese government agencies are supposed to provide contraceptives for free, but it is unclear if minors are eligible or if they need to jump through hoops for the “freebies.”

I am glad that you asked about sexually transmitted diseases. Of all the topics that Chinese sex instruction books may cover for adolescents, this is one topic you never need to worry might be forgotten. STD was practically sex educators’ favorite topic, until the issue of sexual abuse and prevention vied for attention in recent years. Sex educators have always exploited fear to rally the public to their controversial cause, whether it was fear for STD leading to deteriorating health of newborns and enfeebled national defense, or anxiety about sexual abuse harming the physical and mental health of children and youth. As Chinese society and especially middle-class parents increasingly prioritize children’s emotional wellbeing and happiness, sex education literature will be able to throw off the crutches of scary social crisis for bolstering legitimacy, and embrace all aspects of human sexuality including the pleasant and beautiful part.

HW: In children’s books, how is sex presented – eg in a loving relationship, for procreation, obligation, fun, to be avoided with weird uncles …

MC: Chinese picture books present sex as the means for procreation between a married couple, and occasionally acknowledge the process as a joyful and exciting one–because a baby is going to be made! Some books also teach children that parents have needs for privacy and intimacy, but in subtle language so I am not sure if a child reader necessarily understands the association.

Books for teens typically discourage premarital sex as well as dating before adulthood, but they also pragmatically provide information on birth control, thus differing from abstinence-only programs found in the US.

HW: what about LGBTQ ?

MC: Chinese picture books for younger ages faithfully subscribe to a binary view of sexes and sexual orientations, so do not expect to read about gay penguins (like And Tango Makes Three) or queer frogs in them just yet. Many books for school-age readers and parents send conservative, ambiguous, or contradictory messages about the LGBTQ population, but changes can be seen in some of the newer publications. The controversial sex education reader series Treasuring Life 珍爱生命 published by Beijing Normal University Press fully normalizes all sexual orientations. Be Sexually Informed Dad and Mom 做知”性”爸妈 (2016), published by the Southwest Normal University Press, is a parental self-help book on sex instruction and its last and brief section, titled “The Unbearable ‘Brokeback Mountain’,” addresses homosexuality. The movie reference is interesting considering that Ang Lee’s 2005 picture was banned in China, but enough Chinese must have found successful ways to watch it outside theatres. The book cites high attempted suicide rates among LGB youth, and warns that parents will easily push their vulnerable children over the edge if they, too, are insulting and hostile like the larger society is. Appealing to parents’ love for children and protective instinct, the book closes with the following remarks,

Just think of it as a cruel joke that nature has played with your child and family. Accept your child in need of help and let him/her know that you will always be there with unconditional love, even if the entire world has rejected him/her. (p. 177)

I sure hope the next book on the market will not have to end with such a gloomy message imbued with death threat. How about telling readers something interesting and inspiring, like influential LGBTQ people in history and contemporary popular culture, for a start?

70. Vikki Zhang, illustrator with a love of textiles and fashion

I first came across the stunning artwork of Vikki Zhang 张文绮 when she created the covers of four bilingual books by Cao Wenxuan. I was struck by the quality of her work, and of her use of textile design in the art work and have been following her work on Instagram @0717vikki and on her website vikkizhang.com while she has been studying in New York. There’s also a short video about her on Youtube! She’s recently done the cover art for a series of nine titles by some of China’s most famous children’s authors. and kindly agreed to an interview with us!

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Nine new books, with cover art by Vikki Zhang

Hi Vikki, Please tell us about yourself… Who are you? Where are you? What would you like people to know about you?

HI, My name is Vikki Zhang (张文绮). I’m from Huai’an in Jiangsu, and moved to New York three years ago to follow the Illustration as Visual Essay masters program at the SVA [School of Visual Arts]. After graduating, I became a full-time artist. Being an artist has been my dream since I was three , when I started reading picture books. My early art education was in traditional Chinese painting – I did after-school classes for seven years. Influenced by my family and my art teacher, I was so fascinated with all traditional forms of art. These years I have been especially fascinated by Qing dynasty fashion and crafts, paintings from the Song dynasty, gothic novels, surrealism, and English illustrators’ work during the 19th century.

And you also studied Digital Game Design! How has this influenced the way you work in illustration, and in children’s books?

People are often surprised by my BFA background – I studied Digital game design – sometimes I’m surprised too! Because that fast and violent industry looks like another world compared to what I am doing now. However, I really appreciated that experience, which helped me to develop an ability to learn new techniques quickly and keep open-minded.

It seems that textiles and fashion are very important to you, and in your work as well. Can you tell us more about this?

I appreciate all kinds of textiles and decoration on clothes, from chrysanthemums on kimonos, rococo roses on velvet dresses, rivets on punk jackets, to a kingfisher on the collar of a cheongsam. Beautiful clothes bring joy to our life – my mum always said that. When I was young and reading books with illustrations  I used to complain that the characters wore terrible clothes – they didn’t match the historical background or the character’s identity, indicating a carelessness on the part of the illustrator. So I decided to do something about it, I won’t let those little readers find any mistakes.

Vikki Zhang’s illustration from Book of Life (2015)

Also, I really love line drawings by Wu Daozi 吳道子, of the Tang Dynasty. And I just have so much fun getting lost in drawing beautiful clothes, as well as watching them on each season’s runway shows. I learnt a lot from fashion designers, like John Galliano, about creation process – how to transfer a vague feeling into a rich and attractive artwork. The solutions for making book illustrations might be found in fashion design.

Please tell us about a book that you used to love reading as a child, and what was special about it for you.

Cao Wenxuan’s work is special to me. My dad brought Cao’s books for me – I remember the first one I read was The Grass House. Like Border City by Shen Congwen, the story takes place in a countryside setting, which is similar to where my grandparents used to live – in Jiangsu – but more dreamy and simpler. Different from most young adult novels which repeatedly described familiar life in a modern school at that time, Cao’s world was distant from us, it felt very fresh and mysterious to me, but that didn’t interrupt my connection with the characters. And all the characters’ names are unique, rare to see in books, and unforgettable. The only illustration that appeared in that book was the cover. I didn’t pay attention to that until grown up, and then, trying to remember Cao’s story, it was the cover image that jumped up first, and refreshed all my memories.

Another book was Andersen’s Fairytales, I read it a lot because it contained a large amount of illustrations. Looking back, my childhood reading experience helped me to learn, from the reader’s view, how image functions as a very important bridge connecting kids and the unknown world. Kids rely on illustrations – and they trust illustrators – so I will keep learning how to provide a better visual experience for them.

Finally, what are you working on now?

Recently I just finished a children’s book about a terracotta warrior. It’s by Dong Hongyou 董宏猷 and will be published later this year by 21^st Century Publishing House (21世纪出版社) . The story happens in Xi’an, and is told partly in a children’s song. A  boy wakes up the soldier sculpture and brings it to life in our contemporary world.

Illustration by Vikki Zhang in 《兵马俑，快跑！》 (Run fast, Terracotta Warrior!) by DONG Hongyou (21st Century, 2018) – reproduced with permission

Another book I am working on is about Chinese mythology, which is my favorite subject, as I can play with so many exquisite Asian decorative elements. I got great inspiration from murals in the Yongle Palace, as well as elaborate-style painting from modern Chinese artists like Xie Zhen’ou 谢振殴.

Illustration by Vikki Zhang in 《天女》 (Goddesses) by ZHOU Jing 周静 (forthcoming) – reproduced with permission

I am also very lucky in that I got a chance to design clothes for kids, working with an amazing production team in China. The image below is from the Chinese New Year season. We are focusing on traditional Chinese clothes, and my job is designing and drawing textiles. We hope to keep the classic crafts alive and develop them while adding more creative story-telling elements to the patterns. And this way, kids can have fun reading the clothes they are wearing.

Thank you, Vikki, for sharing your work and so many images!

See more of Vikki Zhang’s work on

• her website – http://www.vikkizhang.com
• Instagram – @0717vikki  // https://instagram.com/0717vikki/

67. Chinese dinosaurs in an English village

The Linton Children’s Book Festival takes place this weekend, in the beautiful English village of Linton, not far from Cambridge.  I was invited to introduce DONG Yanan’s book Express Delivery from Dinosaur World yesterday, and the event was fully booked! 32 young readers (some as young as two years old) came along with their parents.

66. Children’s Books in China 2018 (and 2017)

These two supplements from Publishers Weekly were prepared by Teri Tan, who has been covering children’s publishing in Asia since at least 2009. You can download them or read the individual articles and publisher profiles via the links below. A full list of Teri Tan’s articles for Publishers Weekly is available here. 

64. Books from Taiwan

Recently we’ve been asked about children’s books from Taiwan. So, we asked the experts at Books from Taiwan – which has a fabulous website – to tell us about what they do! Many thanks to Ms Ping CHANG 張平 for agreeing to this interview and for sharing these photographs!

62. The NCTA Freeman Book Awards

The 2017 NCTA Freeman Book Awards have just been announced. I’m delighted that Bronze and Sunflower has won the young adult/middle school literature award, and that An’s Seed received an honourable mention. I didn’t really know what the Freeman awards were about. Who better to ask than David Jacobson, whose book Are You an Echo? received an honourable mention last year to tell us about the prize, and what winning meant to him.