The warmth and challenges of life: the growth journey of the little black chicken

“Lit­tle Black Chick­en” is anoth­er mas­ter­piece by Yu Hongcheng, a post-85s pic­ture book writer, fol­low­ing “Food on the Plate.” Through the growth sto­ry of a lit­tle black chick­en, it leads read­ers into a warm yet chal­leng­ing world, while real­is­ti­cal­ly depict­ing the life cycle of a domes­ti­cat­ed chick­en from hatch­ing to full matu­ri­ty. Yu Hongcheng’s del­i­cate­ly real­is­tic illus­tra­tions and pro­found­ly emo­tion­al expres­sion make “Lit­tle Black Chick­en” not only a chil­dren’s pic­ture book with a touch of pop­u­lar sci­ence, but also an edu­ca­tion­al text­book about growth, courage, and life.

The sto­ry of a lit­tle black chick­en’s growth from birth to becom­ing the leader of the flock, from a fairy tale per­spec­tive, resem­bles the com­ing-of-age sto­ry of a young hero. But this growth also begins with a lov­ing fam­i­ly and the warm embrace of its moth­er. The sto­ry begins with the moment the lit­tle black chick­en breaks out of its shell. With its moth­er’s pro­tec­tion and encour­age­ment, it grows hap­pi­ly in an envi­ron­ment filled with love and care. How­ev­er, when its moth­er leaves, the lit­tle black chick­en must face life’s chal­lenges inde­pen­dent­ly. He leads his sib­lings in their search for food, dri­ves away the mis­chie­vous ducks, and ulti­mate­ly defeats the leader of the flock, becom­ing the new leader of the flock. In this jour­ney, which bears a strik­ing resem­blance to human growth, read­ers wit­ness the hard­ships and joys of grow­ing up, while also feel­ing the pre­cious­ness of life and the warmth of fam­i­ly.

How­ev­er, the lit­tle black chick­en’s upbring­ing is vast­ly dif­fer­ent from the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment humans expe­ri­ence. While the sto­ry has a fairy­tale qual­i­ty, and the author attempts to use the first-per­son per­spec­tive of the pro­tag­o­nist, the lit­tle black chick­en, the illus­tra­tions are com­plete­ly real­is­tic, with pho­to­graph­ic detail depict­ing the ani­mals, plants, peo­ple, vil­lage hous­es, and veg­etable gar­dens. With­out first read­ing the text, the read­er’s ini­tial impres­sion might be that this is a pop­u­lar sci­ence book. In fact, the author and pub­lish­er have includ­ed a hand­book specif­i­cal­ly for read­ers, detail­ing the com­plete growth process of a domes­ti­cat­ed chick­en, pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion on the var­i­ous plants fea­tured in the book, and even explor­ing the diverse breeds of chick­ens. From this per­spec­tive, read­ing “Lit­tle Black Chick­en” is also a live­ly and engag­ing edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence.

From a sto­ry­telling per­spec­tive, I think this sto­ry incor­po­rates pop­u­lar sci­ence, which is essen­tial, at least for urban chil­dren. I was born in the 1970s, and although I did­n’t grow up in the coun­try­side, my fam­i­ly raised chick­ens, so I have some under­stand­ing of the life cycle of domes­ti­cat­ed chick­ens. I thought this was com­mon knowl­edge, but when I grad­u­at­ed from uni­ver­si­ty and talked with a class­mate who was born and raised in Bei­jing, I was sur­prised to dis­cov­er she knew noth­ing about it. She said she had nev­er even seen a live domes­tic chick­en! I imag­ine that for a young read­er who has nev­er seen a live chick­en, “The Lit­tle Black Chick­en,” with its real­is­tic illus­tra­tions, still feels more like an ani­mal fairy tale.

Although told in a fairy­tale style, the chal­lenges faced by the chicks dur­ing their growth are very real: the dogs and cats that often prey on them, the sep­a­ra­tion of the moth­er hen and her chicks after they reach a cer­tain stage of growth, the chick­ens’ ter­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty, the fights between roost­ers, and the com­pe­ti­tion for food with oth­er poul­try… The author observes from a human per­spec­tive, offer­ing insight­ful insights into human growth. For exam­ple, the lit­tle black chick­en grew up under the pro­tec­tion of its moth­er, but with her depar­ture, it was forced to learn to live inde­pen­dent­ly. This process demon­strates the inevitable dif­fi­cul­ties and chal­lenges of grow­ing up and empha­sizes the impor­tance of inde­pen­dence. The lit­tle black chick­en dis­plays extra­or­di­nary courage and respon­si­bil­i­ty in fac­ing the bad duck and the head chick­en, remind­ing young read­ers to brave­ly face life’s dif­fi­cul­ties. The lit­tle black chick­en also has to face the real­i­ty of los­ing a loved one dur­ing its growth, which reminds us of the fragili­ty and pre­cious­ness of life and the need to respect and cher­ish every life.

After years of expe­ri­ence, Yu Hongcheng has grown from a grad­u­ate of the pic­ture book cre­ation stu­dio to a high­ly skilled pic­ture book cre­ator. In this book, she demon­strates a mas­ter­ful nar­ra­tive tech­nique com­bin­ing text and images. Sim­i­lar to her work on “A Dish on a Plate,” she draws on long-term obser­va­tion and sketch­ing in rur­al areas, metic­u­lous­ly recre­at­ing the details of rur­al life with rich col­ors. Each illus­tra­tion is imbued with a sense of life, immers­ing the read­er in the scene. How­ev­er, her illus­tra­tions don’t sim­ply sup­ple­ment the text; they also reveal details not men­tioned in the text, and some­times delib­er­ate­ly cre­ate con­trast between text and image to cre­ate a unique nar­ra­tive ten­sion. For exam­ple, on pages 16–17, the text briefly com­plains about the moth­er hen’s nag­ging, while the pic­ture shows a lurk­ing cat, hint­ing at real dan­ger. On the next page, the text admits, “I’ve just dis­cov­ered that my moth­er was right,” while the pic­ture sug­gests that the cat has already tak­en the life of a younger broth­er or sis­ter. These seem­ing­ly ordi­nary and peace­ful images con­ceal a harsh truth about the real world.

Yu Hongcheng main­tains her char­ac­ter­is­tic calm demeanor as she nar­rates this rather inspir­ing com­ing-of-age sto­ry. By the end of the sto­ry, with the lit­tle black chick­en becom­ing the new leader of the flock and dream­ing of its moth­er nestling under its broad wings, the sto­ry could have had a hap­py end­ing. How­ev­er, Yu Hongcheng delib­er­ate­ly left a blank dou­ble-page image, show­ing chick­ens peck­ing at food on the ground while a bowl of chick­en soup sat on a table where humans were prepar­ing din­ner. This prompts the read­er to ask: Who is that chick­en? Is it the same chick­en men­tioned in the sto­ry? This is indeed a fact of life: domes­ti­cat­ed chick­ens are not only part of the fam­i­ly, but they are also often des­tined for food. This real­is­tic metaphor invites read­ers to reflect on the nature of life and the cru­el­ty of exis­tence.

In her state­ment, the author shares her expe­ri­ences rais­ing chick­ens with her moth­er, which not only inspired her to cre­ate “Lit­tle Black Chick­en” but also deep­ened her reflec­tion and rev­er­ence for life. Through the chick­en’s growth sto­ry, she express­es her cher­ish­ment of life and her pro­found under­stand­ing of growth. This gen­uine emo­tion­al out­pour­ing makes the sto­ry even more mov­ing and affect­ing. This book can also be seen as a con­tin­u­a­tion of “A Dish on a Plate,” per­haps the hen and chicks depict­ed in the “Qingzhe” page of “A Dish on a Plate” serve as the intro­duc­tion to the sto­ry of “Lit­tle Black Chick­en.” Both books fea­ture a del­i­cate­ly real­is­tic style, report­ed­ly draw­ing on first­hand mate­r­i­al from the same rur­al area. From doc­u­ment­ing the rice plant­i­ng process to depict­ing the growth of the chicks, Yu Hongcheng has always been atten­tive to life and nature, and through these works, she helps read­ers gain a deep­er under­stand­ing and respect for life.

Regard­ing the metic­u­lous­ly real­is­tic style of paint­ing, some might ask, with the advance­ment of pho­tog­ra­phy today, is this style still valu­able in pic­ture book cre­ation? I believe the answer is yes. While pho­tog­ra­phy can cap­ture real­is­tic details, real­is­tic paint­ing is cre­at­ed through the artist’s vision and tech­nique, embody­ing their emo­tions, per­spec­tives, and expres­sion. This unique qual­i­ty can­not be repli­cat­ed by pho­tographs. Many scenes in “Lit­tle Black Chick­en” appear to have been tak­en with a cam­era, but in real­i­ty, they are entire­ly redesigned and arranged by the cre­ator based on real-life mate­r­i­al, using fic­tion­al tech­niques. The unique per­spec­tive of the sim­u­lat­ed lens also rep­re­sents the author’s per­son­al expres­sion of emo­tions and opin­ions. For exam­ple, in the scene where the moth­er hen says she’s leav­ing, the read­er looks to the low­er left and sees the moth­er hen grad­u­al­ly mov­ing away. At the end of the path is a gate in the fence, with the head hen guard­ing the flock… It’s more like a dra­mat­ic scene from a movie, evok­ing a sense of imag­i­na­tion. This is a high­ly sub­jec­tive expres­sion that con­veys pro­found emo­tion and artis­tic con­cep­tion, aim­ing to enhance the read­er’s sense of immer­sion and emo­tion­al res­o­nance.

“Lit­tle Black Chick­en” is a unique and orig­i­nal work. It can be described as a fairy tale with a touch of pop­u­lar sci­ence, or pop­u­lar sci­ence with a fairy tale twist. In short, it pos­sess­es both edu­ca­tion­al and artis­tic val­ue. This sto­ry of growth, courage, and life should be quite inspir­ing for chil­dren today who need to learn to face life’s chal­lenges and dif­fi­cul­ties.

Argen­tine Primera División writ­ten on June 6, 2024 in Bei­jing