The courage and confidence to embrace a flawed life

——Book Review of “The Cat and Five Cats”

Emerg­ing pic­ture book cre­ator Yuwan always has a way of mak­ing things shine. Fol­low­ing her 2022 book, “Mole Jas­mine,” a com­bi­na­tion of hand­craft and pho­tog­ra­phy, she has now used a hand-drawn, almost graf­fi­ti-like style to cre­ate a seem­ing­ly casu­al and light­heart­ed, yet pro­found and thought-pro­vok­ing sto­ry. “The Cat and the Five Cats” con­tin­ues her del­i­cate and warm style, with a more relaxed and live­ly visu­al lan­guage, rich­er emo­tions, and a rich­er range of poten­tial asso­ci­a­tions, res­onat­ing with both chil­dren and adults.

If the cre­ative approach of “Mole Jas­mine” was some­what influ­enced by the work of Kore­an pic­ture book artist Baek Heena, then “Cat and Five Cats” may be clos­er to Yuwan’s true style. Frankly, that “hand­made + pho­tog­ra­phy” approach is quite gru­el­ing. The cre­ator feels like she’s writ­ing, direct­ing, act­ing, film­ing, and edit­ing a clay fig­urine ani­ma­tion her­self, not to men­tion hav­ing to learn many of the rel­e­vant skills her­self. But I believe it’s also a great self-devel­op­ment tuto­r­i­al for young cre­ators. This new work demon­strates that Yuwan has mas­tered this art of graph­ic sto­ry­telling, sim­pli­fy­ing com­plex con­tent while telling a clear­er sto­ry. Through min­i­mal­ist lines and col­ors, she draws the read­er into the sto­ry and evokes the flow of emo­tion.

The sto­ry begins with the dust jack­et and cov­er illus­tra­tion. A vibrant red dom­i­nates the paint­ing, con­vey­ing a warm and vibrant feel­ing and cap­tur­ing the read­er’s atten­tion. The cen­tral black and white illus­tra­tion con­trasts sharply with the red back­ground, cre­at­ing a sim­ple yet intrigu­ing scene. The pro­tag­o­nist, the cat, with a slight­ly con­fused or melan­cholic expres­sion, looks off to one side (per­haps toward the back cov­er), cre­at­ing a stark con­trast with the relaxed and live­ly demeanor of the oth­er five cats. Each cat has a unique appear­ance and expres­sion, with dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties, yet the seem­ing­ly non­sen­si­cal dis­tinc­tion between “The Cat and the Five Cats” invites spec­u­la­tion. In the cen­ter-upper por­tion of the back cov­er (the most promi­nent posi­tion in the paint­ing), a vibrant red fox appears, direct­ly echo­ing the red maple leaf in the pro­tag­o­nist’s hand. The cov­er illus­tra­tion then fea­tures only the pro­tag­o­nist, the cat. Turn­ing to the front end­pa­pers, a vibrant palette of col­ors seems to push the read­er to the extreme. But then, turn­ing to the title page, only the five cats appear, with a few sim­ple touch­es of brown on a white back­ground. Only a sin­gle red maple leaf remains on the ded­i­ca­tion page, high­light­ing the author’s pro­found grat­i­tude.

Through­out the sto­ry, Yuwan plays with the shift­ing col­ors, the sim­ple shapes and move­ments of the cat and the five cats, and the con­nec­tions between them, allow­ing the read­er to unrav­el a deeply mov­ing tale. The sto­ry itself is sim­ple: the pro­tag­o­nist, the cat, yearns for and pur­sues the fox, ulti­mate­ly end­ing in rejec­tion. While seem­ing­ly sim­ple, it touch­es upon uni­ver­sal and pro­found emotions—the per­sis­tence of unat­tain­able goals, the inabil­i­ty to rec­on­cile loss, and the process of rebuild­ing one­self from pain.

As an adult, I ini­tial­ly read a sto­ry of an unsuc­cess­ful love affair. The cat’s sit­u­a­tion remind­ed me of the croc­o­dile in “The Croc­o­dile Loves the Giraffe.” In that sto­ry, the giraffe and croc­o­dile also seemed mis­matched, yet through hard work, they came togeth­er, even start­ing a fam­i­ly and pro­cre­at­ing. How­ev­er, the fox in this sto­ry flat­ly refused: “You’re a cat, I’m a fox, we can’t be togeth­er.” In the scene where he uttered these words, the fox prac­ti­cal­ly filled the entire frame, yet it looked unre­al, as if from a dream. The cat’s sub­se­quent actions in the fol­low­ing pages beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trate the psy­cho­log­i­cal stages of unre­quit­ed love and heart­break: ini­tial encounter and heart­beat, long­ing and pur­suit, frus­tra­tion and pain, accep­tance and release, growth and let­ting go, and ulti­mate­ly, the recon­struc­tion of one’s “self.”

Near the end of the sto­ry, two pas­sages about the pro­tag­o­nist, the cat, struck me as tru­ly real and mov­ing. While lying in the grass with her friends, “the cat dis­cov­ered that she thought of the fox less and less.” And as time passed, “autumn arrived again, and the cat thought of the fox, but she no longer felt sad when she thought of it.” A care­ful read­er will notice that almost anoth­er win­ter, spring, sum­mer, and autumn have passed since the cat decid­ed to “let go.” This is a long process, from loss and lone­li­ness to heal­ing and regain­ing hope. It requires the courage to face life’s imper­fec­tions. This kind of growth is worth­while, but ulti­mate­ly not easy, and requires a grad­ual process. I think the author does­n’t delib­er­ate­ly sim­pli­fy the sto­ry sim­ply because it’s writ­ten for chil­dren. Such sin­cer­i­ty is admirable.

Some read­ers might ask, since this is a pic­ture book for chil­dren, is it appro­pri­ate to tell a sto­ry about unre­quit­ed love and heart­break? Haha, as I said before, that’s just my ini­tial inter­pre­ta­tion as an adult read­er. A clos­er look might reveal many dif­fer­ent asso­ci­a­tions. In fact, Chi­nese lit­er­ary tra­di­tion is replete with exam­ples of using love poet­ry to metaphor­i­cal­ly allude to larg­er issues in life. For exam­ple, the lines “I seek it but can­not, toss­ing and turn­ing” and “There is a beau­ti­ful woman, on the oth­er side of the water” from the Book of Songs could be inter­pret­ed as a king’s thirst for tal­ent. And in his “Words on Human Poet­ry,” Wang Guowei used Liu Yong’s love poem, “My belt is get­ting wider, but I nev­er regret it; I am becom­ing hag­gard for her” as a metaphor for the greater realm of life, a top­ic that has been wide­ly dis­cussed. Yuwan specif­i­cal­ly wrote in his cre­ative notes that the fox is a “poet­ic metaphor,” rep­re­sent­ing “unreach­able things, yet also the embod­i­ment of ideals.” This is also a very inter­est­ing inter­pre­ta­tion.

How­ev­er, what’s even more inter­est­ing is that no mat­ter how the author inten­tion­al­ly or unin­ten­tion­al­ly “lim­its” the scope of inter­pre­ta­tion, read­ers remain com­plete­ly free. A seem­ing­ly sim­ple sto­ry, pre­cise­ly because it leaves ample “white space,” offers read­ers greater oppor­tu­ni­ties to draw upon their own read­ing and life expe­ri­ences to con­struct their own unique nar­ra­tive. For exam­ple, fans of “The Lit­tle Prince” will undoubt­ed­ly recall the fox’s teach­ing the lit­tle prince about “tam­ing” (or “domes­ti­cat­ing”) under the apple tree, which the fox inter­prets as “estab­lish­ing a con­nec­tion.” In this sto­ry of the cat and the fox, the cat, reject­ed by the fox, can­not leave the tree, but through his obses­sion with the fox, he begins a dia­logue with his soul. This dia­logue can encom­pass obses­sion and pur­suit, or it can reflect the con­flict between real­i­ty and ideals. The fox can rep­re­sent an unat­tain­able “lofty ide­al,” a “vague inspi­ra­tion” in a work, or even a sym­bol of the vir­tu­al world’s “high­light” or “per­fect per­sona” in the social media age. When­ev­er one falls prey to such obses­sion, one inevitably expe­ri­ences a sense of loss and empti­ness, much like the once utter­ly bleak world expe­ri­enced by the pro­tag­o­nist, the cat. Only then did the cat real­ize the real­i­ty of the five cats around it, and in their com­pa­ny, it redis­cov­ered its true self. This seems to be a reflec­tion of the expe­ri­ence that when we are alone, it is often not the “dis­tant light” but the “fire near­by” that guides us out of the shad­ows. This “fire near­by” is the very foun­da­tion that allows us to embrace our imper­fec­tions.

From a child’s per­spec­tive, they can also find res­o­nance in their own life expe­ri­ences. Chil­dren are always curi­ous about and eager to meet new peo­ple and dis­cov­er new things. Per­haps the rela­tion­ship between the cat and the fox can be seen as a yearn­ing for that “spe­cial some­one.” How­ev­er, rela­tion­ships often lead to fail­ure, and the poten­tial for loss and rejec­tion. Feel­ing hurt dur­ing these expe­ri­ences is nor­mal. It’s through repeat­ed set­backs that we become stronger. Embrac­ing life’s imper­fec­tions requires courage and the com­pan­ion­ship and sup­port of those around us. Young read­ers may learn from the cat’s expe­ri­ence to accept imper­fec­tion, cher­ish the sup­port around them, and val­ue the joy of the present moment, rather than pin­ning hap­pi­ness on peo­ple and things far away. From this per­spec­tive, this sto­ry may be more than just about loss and let­ting go, but also a les­son in under­stand­ing, growth, and love.

In her writ­ing notes, the author dis­cuss­es how she “always viewed pic­ture books as a con­tain­er for stor­ing emo­tions and mem­o­ries,” and at the end of the sto­ry, the pro­tag­o­nist, the cat, does the same: “She want­ed to pass this sto­ry on to her friends who had always been by her side.” Inter­est­ing­ly, this reminds me of the open­ing words of Mar­quez’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Liv­ing to Tell: “Life is not what we expe­ri­ence, but what we remem­ber and how we recon­struct it in our mem­o­ries in order to tell it.” From this per­spec­tive, Yuwan is actu­al­ly using “Mole Mol­ly” and “The Cat and the Five Cats” to retell a part of her youth, and pic­ture books are pre­cise­ly the way she hap­pi­ly choos­es to recon­struct her life, allow­ing her to live the way she wants.

I’m so glad to have read such a beau­ti­ful and inspir­ing sto­ry and I hope to read more.

Argen­tine Primera División writ­ten on Jan­u­ary 15, 2025 in Guangzhou