Father and Child: Love Walks Side by Side

Amer­i­can pic­ture book artist Chris Lasi­ca has twice won the Calde­cott Medal for his books “The Mag­ic Win­dow” and “Daisy’s Ball,” and has been nom­i­nat­ed for the Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen Award for Inter­na­tion­al Illus­tra­tor more than once. How­ev­er, Chi­nese read­ers seem less famil­iar with him. This may be due to his pen­chant for exper­i­ment­ing with new media, themes, and styles, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to iden­ti­fy him through his rec­og­niz­able body of work. Each of his books feels like a fresh cre­ation.

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Shoul­der to Shoul­der has been labeled in the Eng­lish-lan­guage world as a book par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­able for chil­dren aged 3–5. It is a refresh­ing and joy­ful breath of fresh air in the world of par­ent-child pic­ture books, cel­e­brat­ing the bond between fathers and chil­dren. In the book, fathers are not just guardians of the fam­i­ly or play­mates; they are also com­pan­ions with whom chil­dren learn and grow, cre­at­ing an irre­place­able bond. Rasi­ka, with his dis­tinc­tive style, cap­tures this core con­cept, trans­form­ing it into a tan­gi­ble and sen­si­ble work of art.

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In this book, Rasi­ka trans­forms his bold use of col­or and form into a visu­al poet­ry. The inter­ac­tions between father and chil­dren in var­i­ous set­tings are mas­ter­ful­ly cap­tured, from play­ful encoun­ters at home to out­door adven­tures. Every ges­ture and expres­sion reveals a deep bond and unspo­ken under­stand­ing. Rasika’s vibrant col­ors and flow­ing lines eas­i­ly cap­ture chil­dren’s atten­tion and spark their imag­i­na­tion. For exam­ple, the open­ing scene depicts the father and daugh­ter, first as “horse and rid­er” and then as “queen and clown.” The entire scene is filled with child­like play­ful­ness and the joy of par­ent-child inter­ac­tion, cre­at­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly warm and joy­ful atmos­phere. The child’s exag­ger­at­ed pre­tend play and exag­ger­at­ed expres­sions, com­ple­ment­ed by the father’s com­i­cal expres­sions and whim­si­cal move­ments, both com­ple­ment and con­trast. The next scene, where the two enjoy kite-fly­ing side by side, cul­mi­nates in a joy­ful moment that strength­ens the play­ful spir­it, cre­ativ­i­ty, and fam­i­ly bonds.

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​Isn’t this scene suit­able for par­ents and chil­dren to watch and rem­i­nisce togeth­er?

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The book’s excep­tion­al­ly con­cise text also imbues it with a spe­cial pow­er. Lasi­ca uses min­i­mal words to nar­rate the sto­ry, a fact that allows for greater read­er engage­ment. Cou­pled with the cheer­ful, live­ly, and evoca­tive images, read­ers can con­nect with their own sto­ries. The restrained nature of the text com­pels read­ers to engage with the images, fill­ing in the unspo­ken details. “Large crane and car­go / loco­mo­tive and car­riages / shoul­der to shoulder”—these phras­es, like rhyth­mic notes, blend seam­less­ly with the illus­tra­tions, form­ing a har­mo­nious par­ent-child sym­pho­ny. Accom­pa­nied by this light and dynam­ic melody, read­ers delight­ful­ly jour­ney through sto­ries that require no fur­ther expla­na­tion.

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One par­tic­u­lar­ly inspir­ing scene in the book depicts a father and daugh­ter revers­ing roles: first, the father teach­es his daugh­ter how to fish, then the daugh­ter teach­es him how to jump rope. This isn’t just a play­ful set­ting; it also cham­pi­ons mod­ern par­ent­ing. A father can be a hum­ble learn­er, while a child can be a trans­mit­ter of wis­dom. This rever­sal of roles cap­tures the essence of edu­ca­tion: mutu­al learn­ing and shared growth. The orig­i­nal Eng­lish phrase, “teacher and learn­er,” could have been trans­lat­ed as “teacher and stu­dent,” but these terms eas­i­ly evoke the some­what rigid roles of school. There­fore, I pre­fer the more col­lo­qui­al term, “teach­ers and learn­ers,” as these roles are inher­ent­ly flu­id and con­stant­ly shift­ing in real life.

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When this book was pub­lished, Rasi­ca filmed a short video explain­ing the inspi­ra­tion behind it. It stemmed from a vis­it to his son Ingo’s art school in Cal­i­for­nia. There, he and his son sat side by side, cre­at­ing art­work togeth­er. He had meth­ods to teach him, and he, in turn, had tech­niques to share with him. At the time, he could­n’t help but reflect on this father-son rela­tion­ship, real­iz­ing that there were things his son knew that he did­n’t, and things he knew that his son did­n’t. This shared learn­ing process was always a process of mutu­al exchange. Rasi­ca felt this rela­tion­ship was par­tic­u­lar­ly worth cel­e­brat­ing, so he returned and cre­at­ed the book, Shoul­der to Shoul­der.

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As a father of a daugh­ter, I’ve had sim­i­lar insights myself. Back in May 2004, I gave a lec­ture at the Nation­al Library titled “Pic­ture Books and Par­ent-Child Read­ing.” One of the top­ics was “Pic­ture Books: Chil­dren as Adults’ Teach­ers.” My daugh­ter was less than five years old at the time, and I’d been exposed to pic­ture books for less than three years. But much of my under­stand­ing of pic­ture books back then ben­e­fit­ed from my daugh­ter’s help, espe­cial­ly regard­ing visu­al nar­ra­tives and the rela­tion­ship between text and images. She pro­vid­ed me with many insights. There­fore, I sug­gest­ed at the time that if adults want to gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of pic­ture books, they should read more with their chil­dren, “see­ing pic­ture books through a child’s eyes.” Indeed, I still hold this view to this day.

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In tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships and roles, fathers are often assigned the role of pro­tect­ing and guid­ing their chil­dren. Peo­ple often use the expres­sion “father­ly love is like a moun­tain” to empha­size its depth and grandeur. But think care­ful­ly, isn’t this a suf­fi­cient reflec­tion of the father-child rela­tion­ship? What about the aspect of equal inter­ac­tion, mutu­al learn­ing, and shared growth? What about the humor­ous, play­ful side? Why not “father­ly love is like water,” encour­ag­ing, nour­ish­ing, and adapt­ing? Why not “father­ly love is like light” or “father­ly love is like wind,” empha­siz­ing the aspect of illu­mi­nat­ing, blow­ing, and push­ing? Why not “father­ly love is like a song,” metaphor­i­cal­ly refer­ring to the aspect that brings joy and encour­age­ment, and may even inspire artis­tic inspi­ra­tion? In mod­ern soci­ety, the role of the father is quite diverse. Every father may have his or her own unique char­ac­ter­is­tics, allow­ing him or her to bring out his or her best strengths in the par­ent-child rela­tion­ship.

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In “Shoul­der to Shoul­der,” we see such diverse father­ly love. In fact, we also see father­ly love in mul­ti­ple cul­tures and back­grounds. Those heart­warm­ing pic­tures tran­scend cul­tur­al bound­aries, show­ing fathers and chil­dren of all col­ors and nation­al­i­ties, high­light­ing the uni­ver­sal­i­ty and diverse beau­ty of fam­i­ly love. In those fathers who lis­ten to, under­stand, and adapt to their chil­dren’s needs, we see “father­ly love like water”; in those fathers who exchange the roles of teach­ing and learn­ing with their chil­dren, and play the roles of “dream­er” and “doer,” we see “father­ly love like light”; in those fathers who play games with their chil­dren and encour­age them to climb and explore, we should also see “father­ly love like a song”… There­fore, such a pic­ture book can indeed be said to be a “cel­e­bra­tion of father­ly love,” and it is a cel­e­bra­tion full of chil­dren’s fun and artis­tic inter­est. ​

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I can’t help but want to dis­cuss a few more details about artist Chris Lasi­ca, born in 1959. I met him close­ly in 2015 at the USBBY (US IBBY) con­fer­ence. He’s a rather low-key artist. That year, he had already been nom­i­nat­ed for the Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen Award by the Inter­na­tion­al Board on Books for Young Peo­ple (USA) for the sec­ond time, yet he remained remark­ably hum­ble in his dis­cus­sions and dis­cus­sions. He pri­mar­i­ly paints in water­col­or, but his style has a strong influ­ence on Chi­nese ink paint­ing. He also enjoys clas­si­cal Chi­nese paint­ings and has a par­tic­u­lar fond­ness for Chi­nese brush cal­lig­ra­phy, but he does­n’t delib­er­ate­ly imi­tate Chi­nese paint­ing tech­niques. He’s most drawn to the imme­di­a­cy of paint­ing, the seem­ing­ly uncer­tain yet expres­sive tech­nique that reveals the artist’s emo­tions and per­son­al­i­ty in a fleet­ing stroke. He describes his great­est admi­ra­tion as the “time­less imme­di­a­cy” of the brush­strokes in ancient Chi­nese paint­ing and cal­lig­ra­phy.

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To appre­ci­ate Lasi­ca’s illus­tra­tions, it’s impor­tant to under­stand his oth­er iden­ti­ty: a skilled vio­lin­ist. He’s been pas­sion­ate about paint­ing and music since child­hood, devel­op­ing and refin­ing his hob­bies. He majored in biol­o­gy in col­lege and, after some expe­ri­ence in the real world, was admit­ted to med­ical school. He had orig­i­nal­ly planned to become a doc­tor, but when he arrived at the med­ical school and was about to apply, he hes­i­tat­ed. After a sleep­less night of brood­ing, he final­ly decid­ed to give up the next day, fear­ing that med­ical school would mean he would­n’t be able to con­tin­ue paint­ing. He chose paint­ing as his pri­ma­ry career, forc­ing music to take a back seat. When­ev­er he had the chance, he explored the pow­er of music through paint­ing and pic­ture books. For exam­ple, he cre­at­ed sev­er­al pic­ture books for chil­dren that explore jazz music and the lives of jazz mas­ters. I sus­pect that for him, jazz, like tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese paint­ing and cal­lig­ra­phy, holds a cer­tain kind of imme­di­a­cy. In 2024, he also col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nicholas Day to cre­ate the pic­ture book “Noth­ing: John Cage and 4’33”, which tells a musi­cal leg­end and is actu­al­ly a dis­cus­sion with chil­dren about what music is.

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The imme­di­a­cy and musi­cal­i­ty of his paint­ing style may be the most endur­ing styl­is­tic fea­ture of Lasika’s works. How­ev­er, this style is high­ly change­able and flu­id. The themes that Lasi­ka is inter­est­ed in are also very diverse, and any inter­est­ing bit of life can become his cre­ative mate­r­i­al. There­fore, it is dif­fi­cult for read­ers to grasp his so-called “icon­ic” style.

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Rasi­ca has his own “sys­tem” for cre­at­ing pic­ture books. He places great empha­sis on the integri­ty of his works. Although his paint­ings often appear sim­ple and his brush­work some­what casu­al, their over­all struc­ture is remark­ably ratio­nal and rig­or­ous. This may be due to his half-Aus­tri­an ances­try (from his moth­er). He always starts by mak­ing a com­plete “dum­my book.” Once the over­all struc­ture is deter­mined, he repeat­ed­ly cre­ates “dum­my books” of the same size as the fin­ished book. Only when he is sat­is­fied with the over­all log­ic and the effect of the page turns will he begin to draw these seem­ing­ly ran­dom drafts. For exam­ple, the nar­ra­tive of “Shoul­der to Shoul­der” is actu­al­ly com­posed of a set of rough­ly three fac­ing pages, alter­nat­ing between father and daugh­ter and father and son. There is a sum­ma­ry and tran­si­tion­al page between the first three sets. Does­n’t this resem­ble the cre­ation of a short musi­cal? Rasi­ca also delib­er­ate­ly made the open fac­ing pages a calm, full square shape, so that the closed book becomes a long, thin shape. This appear­ance makes this book quite unique in the pic­ture book world, per­haps more like­ly to attract read­ers’ atten­tion and make it a per­fect gift!

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When cre­at­ing pic­ture books, Lasi­ca places par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on tac­tile sen­sa­tions and the effect of turn­ing pages. His approach is much like that of a craft design­er, who pri­or­i­tizes the user’s touch and expe­ri­ence. Fur­ther­more, Lasi­ca delib­er­ate­ly avoids pur­su­ing the poten­tial for “depth” in his images. He him­self enjoys read­ing, both nov­els and text books, and believes that “depth” is essen­tial. How­ev­er, he believes that pic­ture book illus­tra­tions don’t need to be exces­sive­ly “deep.” They must reach the read­er direct­ly, leav­ing a strong impres­sion through imme­di­ate expe­ri­ence. There­fore, when view­ing Lasi­ca’s illus­tra­tions, it’s help­ful to com­plete­ly relax and, like a child, sim­ply let the images “come” to you.

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To learn more about Chris Lasi­ca, I high­ly rec­om­mend read­ing the lengthy con­ver­sa­tion between Mr. Mar­cus and Lasi­ca in the inter­view col­lec­tion, “Why Pic­ture Books Mat­ter.” Lasi­ca’s own upbring­ing, artis­tic pur­suits, and fam­i­ly life have pro­found­ly influ­enced his work. Just like this book, “Shoul­der to Shoul­der,” which Lasi­ca ded­i­cates to both his father and his son, he re-exam­ines the role of father through this book. This kind of reflec­tion and cel­e­bra­tion can also be shared by every read­er.

Argen­tine Primera División writ­ten on April 14, 2024 in Bei­jing

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