The Master’s Secret: Giving Children Great Joy and Satisfaction

 A tip: The sim­pli­fied Chi­nese ver­sion of this book is expect­ed to be released this year.
 
   
As par­ents, you’re bound to encounter unrea­son­able requests from your chil­dren: “Please take down the moon for me!” How would you respond to such a request?
   
In most cas­es, we would prob­a­bly throw up our hands and say to our lit­tle ones: “Pick the stars, pick the moon? There’s real­ly noth­ing we can do about it!” More prac­ti­cal par­ents might even seize this oppor­tu­ni­ty to try to give their chil­dren an astron­o­my les­son about the moon and stars.

   
But would you read­i­ly say, “Okay, I’ll go take the moon down right now”?
 

   
James Thurber pre­sent­ed a clas­sic scene in the 1944 edi­tion of “The Princess and the Moon”: The lit­tle princess longed for the moon and became depressed. The king, who had always been able to call the shots, was pow­er­less to help her, and the min­is­ters were at a loss. Only the clown tried to find out the lit­tle girl’s true thoughts and gave her a small moon orna­ment to sat­is­fy the princess’s wish. Final­ly, every­one was hap­py!

   
Such sto­ries seem to imply that we par­ents often cre­ate trou­ble for our­selves, do not real­ly under­stand our chil­dren’s psy­chol­o­gy, and are not good at com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them.
   
How­ev­er, after read­ing this sto­ry, I still feel a lit­tle uncon­vinced: What if the child real­ly insists on hav­ing the moon in the sky? 
 
   
We encounter anoth­er response in Eric Car­le’s “Dad­dy, I Want the Moon” (first pub­lished in 1986), writ­ten by the kind of pic­ture book mas­ter who does­n’t hes­i­tate to say, “I’ll get the moon.”

   
Car­l’s sto­ry con­sists of only four char­ac­ters: his daugh­ter, his father, the cat, and the moon. It could have been as sim­ple as not even includ­ing the black cat, but the artist loves cats so much that he wants them to be with him wher­ev­er he lives. There­fore, for him, a sto­ry that strives for per­fec­tion can­not be with­out a cat.

   
Okay, enough of that small talk. Look at that dad! With­out a word, he sets off car­ry­ing a long lad­der. You can’t tell how long it is; even if you flip open the two folds, you can’t see the end. Such a lad­der would be per­fect for a moun­tain (so high you can even see the top), with the oth­er end reach­ing the moon. Dad climbs up to the moon. It’s so huge you have to flip open the cen­ter fold com­plete­ly to see the whole thing!
 

   
The father was very polite and asked the moon to play with his daugh­ter. The moon was also very polite and said that it would wait until it grad­u­al­ly became small­er before ask­ing the father to take it down. The father wait­ed as he was told. Final­ly, when the moon was the right size, he took the moon and slow­ly climbed down the lad­der. Then he said to his daugh­ter, “Hold it. I’ll help you get the moon down.”

   
This moment is tru­ly a moment worth cel­e­brat­ing for all chil­dren and adults! As long as the desire is strong enough, as long as the love is deep enough, it seems that there will always be a way to get what you want. — Is it real­ly? This is more of a beau­ti­ful belief than a truth.

    
Obvi­ous­ly, “Dad­dy, I Want the Moon” is just a fairy tale. How­ev­er, even for fairy tales, some peo­ple pre­fer to incor­po­rate more knowl­edge, morals, and mean­ing, while oth­ers pre­fer to main­tain a sim­ple, even seem­ing­ly mean­ing­less, absurd sim­plic­i­ty. Eric Car­le seems to lean towards the lat­ter. His self-writ­ten and illus­trat­ed pic­ture books typ­i­cal­ly have the fol­low­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics: the illus­tra­tions are very dis­tinct, almost instant­ly rec­og­niz­able; the sto­ry­lines are sim­ple, rarely involv­ing com­plex twists and turns, but always with a moment of sur­prise; the morals seem to have some sub­stance, but are gen­er­al­ly vague; the sto­ries con­tain some knowl­edge, but are more play­ful than rig­or­ous; the design of the books often has a strong sense of play­ful­ness, giv­ing the books an over­all feel more like toys.

   
Per­haps due to these char­ac­ter­is­tics, Car­l’s pic­ture books are not eas­i­ly tak­en seri­ous­ly by aca­d­e­m­ic researchers, as they sim­ply can­not find much to study or com­ment on. Fur­ther­more, since the fun of these pic­ture books often stems from their being more like toys, judges of major award pro­grams have felt it unnec­es­sary to award him a major pic­ture book award. How­ev­er, this has not pre­vent­ed read­ers of all ages from deeply embrac­ing his work.

   
Unlike most illus­tra­tors, Eric Car­le is a keen artist who demon­strates his cre­ative process. Detailed images depict­ing his process can be found on his offi­cial web­site, and he also enjoys show­ing you his draw­ings while he talks dur­ing tele­vi­sion inter­views. He main­tains that his tech­niques are noth­ing to be tri­fled with, even claim­ing they’re so sim­ple that even a child could learn them. If you’re not con­vinced, bring your chil­dren along and try them out. Watch­ing him paint in the videos is tru­ly a joy. Sim­ply lay­ing out a sheet of paper, pick­ing up a brush and paint, he smears and dabs, then casu­al­ly cuts and pastes, and a beau­ti­ful world and vivid images appear before your eyes.

   
Yet, such a sim­ple sto­ry and seem­ing­ly casu­al illus­tra­tions can tru­ly move read­ers. A senior friend in the pub­lish­ing indus­try told me that she chose to cre­ate pic­ture books because she could not for­get the pro­found impact she felt the first time she read “Dad­dy, I Want the Moon.” Anoth­er friend’s four-year-old boy, after hear­ing the book for the first time, imme­di­ate­ly ran excit­ed­ly to the bal­cony and searched every­where. When asked what he was look­ing for, he replied, “I want to help Dad find a lad­der!”

   
I firm­ly believe that won­der­ful books can pro­duce won­der­ful pow­er. But where does this won­der­ful pow­er come from? I don’t know the exact answer, but this is pre­cise­ly what makes it so fas­ci­nat­ing.

   
In an inter­view, Eric Car­le stat­ed that in his work he always seeks to delight the child in his mind—in oth­er words, to find immense sat­is­fac­tion in the child he once was. This is exem­pli­fied by the sim­ple yet intense joy his work evokes. This joy like­ly stems from Car­le’s unique child­hood expe­ri­ences, but that’s a long sto­ry for anoth­er time…
 
   
The long sto­ry about Eric Car­le can be found at:Mas­ters of the Art of Sto­ry­telling for Chil­dren (Part 7)
 
Writ­ten by Ajia in July 2011, com­piled before the Mid-Autumn Fes­ti­val