A wondrous adventure that transforms ordinary people into heroes

Michael Rosen (1946~), the British lau­re­ate chil­dren’s book author, may be a famil­iar yet unfa­mil­iar fig­ure to Chi­nese read­ers. He became a sen­sa­tion on the Chi­nese inter­net for his expres­sive “Nice” emo­ji, but few Chi­nese read­ers have fall­en in love with this “Nice Grand­pa” because of his works, and even few­er know his life sto­ry. He has writ­ten more than 200 books for chil­dren and adults through­out his life, and more than a dozen have been trans­lat­ed and intro­duced to Chi­na. Among the most famous are the pic­ture books *We’re Going on a Bear Hunt* (illus­trat­ed by Helen Oxen­bury), *Sad Book* (illus­trat­ed by Quentin Black), and *Choco­late Cake* (illus­trat­ed by Kevin Waldron)—I was for­tu­nate enough to trans­late the lat­ter.

If you’ve read his pic­ture books, you’ll agree that “Grand­pa Nice” is first and fore­most a poet, excep­tion­al­ly skilled at writ­ing rhyth­mic vers­es; more­over, he’s a rather humor­ous poet, as even his poems depict­ing every­day life always man­age to elic­it laugh­ter. Fur­ther­more, he’s a sea­soned actor, his own nuanced per­for­mances often resem­bling a cap­ti­vat­ing one-act play. In fact, the “Nice emo­ji” orig­i­nat­ed from a video of him telling a sto­ry. How­ev­er, *Sad Book* is a rare excep­tion. That book stemmed from his immense grief over the loss of his son, and he found com­fort and heal­ing through shar­ing that expe­ri­ence. Dur­ing the 2020 pan­dem­ic, after con­tract­ing COVID-19 and spend­ing 48 days in inten­sive care, he mirac­u­lous­ly sur­vived. He even wrote a bio­graph­i­cal col­lec­tion of prose poems, *Many Dif­fer­ent Kinds of Love: A Sto­ry of Life, Death and the NHS*, reflect­ing on that expe­ri­ence, express­ing grat­i­tude for life, and espe­cial­ly thank­ing the health­care work­ers who saved his life.

“Grand­pa Nice” is essen­tial­ly a mas­ter sto­ry­teller who uses humor­ous and rhyth­mic lan­guage to tell sto­ries root­ed in real life and gen­uine feel­ings. Some­times his sto­ries are very real­is­tic, and some­times they are full of fan­ta­sy, but at their core they are very sin­cere. If you savor them care­ful­ly, you’ll find some­thing substantial—delicate emo­tions, deep love, and pro­found wis­dom about life. In short, like a rich­ly fla­vored choco­late cake, it has a unique and lay­ered fla­vor that is irre­sistible and leaves a last­ing impres­sion.

Okay, let’s get down to busi­ness and talk about his 2023 chil­dren’s nov­el, *The Incred­i­ble Adven­tures of Gas­ton the Dog*. It’s said that this was a work he vowed to com­plete after his near-death expe­ri­ence that year. Despite suf­fer­ing from the aftereffects—irreversible dam­age to his eye­sight, hear­ing, and memory—the adven­tures of “Gas­ton the Dog” became one of his great­est cre­ative desires, almost as a form of self-heal­ing. Com­plet­ing this sto­ry felt like embark­ing on a new adven­ture, anoth­er “hero’s jour­ney.”

Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, before read­ing this book, I had just fin­ished trans­lat­ing Rosen’s *Fan­tas­tic Mr. Dahl*, writ­ten for young read­ers. That book, rather than being a biog­ra­phy of the famous chil­dren’s author Roald Dahl’s upbring­ing, was more like a trea­sure trove of “writ­ing secrets” from Rosen, a mas­ter sto­ry­teller him­self, intro­duc­ing Dahl as a mas­ter sto­ry­teller. That book focused more on ana­lyz­ing the con­nec­tion between Dahl’s devel­op­ment and his superb writ­ing skills. Inspired by this, I also want­ed to try a sim­i­lar approach to tell the sto­ry both inside and out­side this adven­ture chil­dren’s book.

First, this fairy tale has a strong “oral sto­ry” feel. Judg­ing from the ded­i­ca­tion, the father, Rosen, ded­i­cat­ed the book to “Emile,” because when Emil was young, he would con­stant­ly ask Rosen to tell him anoth­er “Gas­ton’s Sto­ry” dur­ing the long sum­mer days. Accord­ing to a 2021 report in the British news­pa­per *The Guardian*, Emile was Rosen’s youngest son, around 16 years old at the time. In short, Rosen has been mar­ried three times, has five bio­log­i­cal chil­dren, and two stepchil­dren. His late sec­ond son, Eddie, is the pro­tag­o­nist of his *Sad Book*. “Gas­ton’s Sto­ry” is a sto­ry specif­i­cal­ly for his youngest son, Emile—“Your dad, who loves you so much,” want­ed to fin­ish telling this sto­ry after mirac­u­lous­ly sur­viv­ing inten­sive care, sug­gest­ing that the sto­ry con­tains some impor­tant infor­ma­tion.

As an oral sto­ry, it inevitably has an “impro­vi­sa­tion­al” ele­ment. For exam­ple, this sto­ry was told by Rosen dur­ing his son’s vaca­tion in France, so the sto­ry is set in France; the names of the ani­mal char­ac­ters are also con­ve­nient, they are their French words (the Chi­nese trans­la­tion is a translit­er­a­tion): the dog is “Gas­ton,” the hedge­hog is “Héris­son” the but­ter­fly is “Papil­lon,” and the fox is “Renard”… The devel­op­ment of the plot also seems some­what arbi­trary, with a gen­er­al direction—“Gaston the dog is going to the beach of his child­hood,” and the sto­ry in between can be made up at will, whether it is near or far, long or short, new char­ac­ters and new plots can be added at any time, and can be skipped at any time, as long as the lis­ten­er is hap­py.

This kind of “oral sto­ry­telling” is incred­i­bly ben­e­fi­cial for devel­op­ing par­ent-child rela­tion­ships, because it feels like a col­lab­o­ra­tive prod­uct between the speak­er and the lis­ten­er. A child’s inter­rup­tions and ques­tions can change the direc­tion of the sto­ry; a child’s strong inter­est in a par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter or plot can inspire the speak­er to impro­vise even more enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. If both are in high spir­its, they can con­tin­ue the sto­ry; if they’re tired, they can stop for a while and con­tin­ue tomor­row. No won­der lit­tle Emil keeps ask­ing his father to tell him anoth­er one. It’s easy to imag­ine how much this father, over six­ty years old, loves his young son; nam­ing him after his child­hood hero, “Emil” (the lit­tle detec­tive in Erich Käst­ner’s *Emil und die Detek­tive*) speaks vol­umes. His sto­ry­telling and per­for­mance at this moment embod­ies a life­time of expe­ri­ence cre­at­ing poet­ry, dra­ma, and fairy tales for chil­dren, cou­pled with a pre­cise under­stand­ing of child psy­chol­o­gy.

He chose to nar­rate from Gas­ton’s per­spec­tive, using the first-per­son nar­ra­tive, which per­fect­ly show­cased his vet­er­an act­ing tal­ent. Gas­ton’s solil­o­quy and psy­cho­log­i­cal devel­op­ment are pre­sent­ed very trans­par­ent­ly as the plot unfolds. Bor­row­ing from Rosen’s obser­va­tion in *Fan­tas­tic Mr. Dahl*, “One inter­est­ing thing about read­ing these kinds of works is think­ing about ‘who is real­ly talk­ing’ ”—on the sur­face, the whole sto­ry is told by Gas­ton, but in real­i­ty, it’s all Rosen’s words; Rosen is “real.” Gas­ton’s child­like expres­sions are inter­spersed with insights into grow­ing up, and reflec­tions on ethics and life wis­dom at cru­cial moments. These are all spo­ken by Rosen, the “dad,” but deliv­ered through Gas­ton’s mouth, they feel so inter­est­ing, so nat­ur­al, and often invite young read­ers (lis­ten­ers) to inter­act.

When young read­ers encounter such a sto­ry, they are like­ly to feel an irre­sistible urge to par­tic­i­pate: The lit­tle hedge­hog with short legs, who does­n’t seem to run very fast, also wants to go to the beach—should we take him along? The col­or­ful but­ter­fly that loves to flut­ter around—should we let her come along too? Faced with a high wall they can’t cross, should they try togeth­er to guess “the word” that can open the door?… Because it’s Gas­ton the dog telling the sto­ry, and chil­dren have clear­ly fall­en in love with this humor­ous pro­tag­o­nist from the very begin­ning, they will all choose to “stand on Gas­ton’s side,” and thus, they will def­i­nite­ly par­tic­i­pate. This, of course, is anoth­er secret to Rosen’s sto­ry­telling.

Just as Dahl always man­aged to ensure read­ers sided with his young pro­tag­o­nists (such as James, Char­lie, George, Dan­ny, Matil­da, etc.), Rosen excels at it as well. Gas­ton the dog wins over young read­ers from the very begin­ning; he’s live­ly, intel­li­gent, inno­cent, fear­less, adven­tur­ous, and always ready to act (though per­haps a lit­tle reckless)—a per­fect fit for chil­dren’s nature. How­ev­er, Rosen’s bril­liance lies in not mak­ing Gas­ton a “lofty hero” from the start. In fact, Gas­ton is ini­tial­ly clue­less, with only vague mem­o­ries of the beach and no idea how to get there. He even hes­i­tates about the hedge­hog and but­ter­fly who want to join him. Dur­ing the adven­ture to the beach, he’s not always the smartest or the most cru­cial; he’s help­less, suc­cumbs to crav­ings, is mis­led by illu­sions, suc­cumbs to the temp­ta­tion of trea­sure, and dis­re­gards the prophet­ic advice of the wise snake Ser­pent… In short, he strug­gles to avoid all the flaws and mis­takes of ordi­nary peo­ple. Inter­est­ing­ly, Gas­ton remains a very endear­ing char­ac­ter because he is incred­i­bly sin­cere and straight­for­ward, always cor­rect­ing his mis­takes; he always cares for his com­pan­ions, even tol­er­at­ing for­mer ene­mies like the cat king; and he nev­er aban­dons his ini­tial dream of going to the beach, demon­strat­ing unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment in this regard. There­fore, he ulti­mate­ly becomes the leader of the adven­ture team and leads every­one to the real “trea­sure.” From this per­spec­tive, this adven­ture is pre­cise­ly Gas­ton’s jour­ney of growth.

Some over­seas read­ers have com­ment­ed that Gas­ton pos­sess­es a “Don Quixote-like” hero­ic qual­i­ty upon his intro­duc­tion, which is an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive. This is main­ly because Gas­ton’s inno­cent and fear­less jour­ney to the beach for a won­drous adven­ture feels like a hero’s “long and adven­tur­ous voyage”—his Eng­lish name “Odyssey” orig­i­nates from the ancient Greek hero Odyssey’s jour­ney home. Atten­tive read­ers might com­pare the sim­i­lar­i­ties: Gas­ton is sum­moned to embark on a jour­ney, con­stant­ly joined by friends (team­mates), gets lost but receives nec­es­sary guid­ance, stum­bles into the vil­lain’s cas­tle, receives advice from a prophet, falls into a mag­i­cal predica­ment, escapes and enters a pas­sage, is bewil­dered by var­i­ous illu­sions (fos­sils and dream palaces) dur­ing his escape, and is tempt­ed by human weak­ness­es, only to find upon arrival that it’s just the begin­ning of a new adven­ture… Does­n’t this per­fect­ly con­trast with and echo Odyssey’s hero­ic jour­ney home?

In fact, such jour­neys can be asso­ci­at­ed with many oth­ers, such as Frodo’s “Fel­low­ship of the Ring” in *The Lord of the Rings*, which is also well-known. Regard­ing this type of “hero­ic jour­ney,” accord­ing to Joseph Camp­bel­l’s sum­ma­ry in *The Hero with a Thou­sand Faces*, it gen­er­al­ly involves a process of “journey—turning point—return.” Com­par­ing Gas­ton’s jour­ney: the start­ing point—the call to action; step­ping out of the ordinary—the path of tri­al; the cru­cial turn­ing point; the escape from mag­ic and the end of the jour­ney; return and accep­tance: a return and sub­li­ma­tion… it also con­forms to the par­a­digm of a hero­ic jour­ney, the dif­fer­ence being:Gas­ton’s adven­ture is not about a hero embark­ing on a jour­ney, but about an ordi­nary per­son becom­ing a true hero after expe­ri­enc­ing the jour­ney.

There­fore, although this is an “oral sto­ry” with a seem­ing­ly less rig­or­ous nar­ra­tive struc­ture, Rosen, a mas­ter sto­ry­teller, strict­ly adheres to the tra­di­tions of clas­sic human nar­ra­tives, a mean­ing­ful tra­di­tion that can be traced back to the time of Home­r’s epics. Of course, young read­ers don’t need to con­cern them­selves with this clas­sic lit­er­ary par­a­digm; they can sim­ply fall in love with the sto­ry because of cer­tain famil­iar ele­ments.Talk­ing ani­mals, trea­sure hunts, mak­ing friends, each dis­play­ing their unique abil­i­ties, work­ing togeth­er to defeat oppo­nents, mag­ic, trans­for­ma­tion, cas­tles, traps, mazes, puz­zles, find­ing an exit, escap­ing, gain­ing free­dom, and more.The most thrilling and excit­ing part of the adven­ture incor­po­rates the clas­sic fairy tale “Puss in Boots,” which they are par­tic­u­lar­ly famil­iar with. The “cat king” in the book is actu­al­ly the leg­endary cat from the world of fairy tales, but in this new­ly adapt­ed sto­ry, he plays a less-than-hon­or­able role.

In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, *So They Call You Pish­er!: A Mem­oir*, Rosen recounts how, at the age of sev­en, he sub­mit­ted a writ­ing con­test to *The Dai­ly Work­er*, win­ning an award and receiv­ing the hon­or of pub­li­ca­tion. His piece was essen­tial­ly a retelling of a sto­ry he had read, “Solomon the Cat,” at a time when he could­n’t dis­tin­guish between “orig­i­nal” and “par­o­dy.” His par­ents, both rad­i­cal com­mu­nists from East Lon­don with strong inter­na­tion­al­ist ideals and numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with transna­tion­al work­ers’ com­mu­ni­ties, fre­quent­ly read chil­dren’s books from around the world to him and his brother—a prac­tice he lat­er real­ized was quite avant-garde for its time. In short, he grew up immersed in sto­ries, devel­op­ing a life­long pas­sion for lan­guage and lit­er­a­ture, which like­ly con­tributed to his deci­sion to aban­don med­i­cine for lit­er­a­ture at uni­ver­si­ty.

In oth­er words, Rosen telling sto­ries to his youngest son was a nat­ur­al con­tin­u­a­tion of the fam­i­ly tra­di­tion. Since they were telling sto­ries dur­ing a vaca­tion in France, he decid­ed to pick one that had a strong French fla­vor: *Puss in Boots*. This fairy tale has dif­fer­ent ver­sions through­out Europe; the ear­li­est writ­ten ver­sion was in Ital­ian, but the most wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed is the ver­sion includ­ed in *Moth­er Goose Tales* (Les Con­tes de ma mère l’Oye) by the French writer Charles Per­rault. Of course, Rosen would­n’t sim­ply imi­tate it as he did when he was sev­en. He clev­er­ly bor­rowed this well-known fairy tale, seem­ing­ly con­tin­u­ing it, but actu­al­ly sub­vert­ing the entire sto­ry. The orig­i­nal sto­ry was full of clev­er­ness, but the cat’s “clev­er­ness” was actu­al­ly a series of lies that fooled the king, defeat­ed the ogre, gained wealth and sta­tus out of thin air, and rearranged the fates of the miller’s youngest son and the princess. So, did they “live hap­pi­ly ever after”?

I sus­pect that Emil must have heard the sto­ry of Puss in Boots before telling Gas­ton’s tale. So, when the wise snake Ser­pent tells Gas­ton and the oth­ers the ori­gin of “cat king,” the but­ter­fly Bar­bie Drag­on can’t help but inter­ject, imme­di­ate­ly point­ing to the source of the orig­i­nal fairy tale—this is prob­a­bly equiv­a­lent to young Emile’s inter­jec­tion. Through this “inter­tex­tu­al­i­ty,” the read­er is imme­di­ate­ly drawn into the sto­ry, and then, through Ser­pen­t’s abrupt and dra­mat­ic fol­low-up nar­ra­tion, the sto­ry becomes, as Papil­lon laments, “…now a hor­ror sto­ry. A ter­ri­ble and annoy­ing trap!” But why is this?

Sel­ban’s expla­na­tion is that,The cat that ate the ogre also gained the ogre’s mag­i­cal abil­i­ties, and the cat grad­u­al­ly became more and more like the ogre!This is a very inter­est­ing metaphor, reveal­ing Rosen’s insight into the dark­er side of human nature. The increas­ing­ly evil Elvis becomes some­one every­one avoids, even his for­mer mas­ter and princess are not spared. Grow­ing increas­ing­ly lone­ly, he can only turn passers­by into “gob­lins,” enslav­ing them to main­tain the castle’s oper­a­tion. The mag­i­cal ele­ment that turns these passers­by into “gob­lins” is their inabil­i­ty to resist the temp­ta­tion of enchant­ed “food”! Inter­est­ing­ly, Gas­ton and Eli­son, know­ing the evil con­se­quences, also suc­cumb to temp­ta­tion, while only Bar­bie Drag­on pass­es the mag­i­cal tri­al. Why? Is it because she is most famil­iar with the sto­ry of “Puss in Boots”? It seems that read­ing (and lis­ten­ing to sto­ries) has its ben­e­fits!

The hero of clas­sic fairy tales has become the evil cat king in a new sto­ry, and the mech­a­nism of his trans­for­ma­tion may be relat­ed to the trea­sure chest he has always been obsessed with guard­ing. It was orig­i­nal­ly the trea­sure of an ogre, and may have ini­tial­ly been obtained through plun­der. This so-called “trea­sure chest” is much like the One Ring that Fro­do was about to destroy; it pos­sess­es a pow­er­ful “cor­ro­sive force.” Who­ev­er gets attached to it becomes filled with greed, and the clos­er and longer they are, the greater the cor­ro­sive effect. Even Gas­ton could­n’t resist trick­ing him­self by hid­ing a sil­ver chain when try­ing to pass through the obsta­cle. Ulti­mate­ly, only by com­plete­ly let­ting go can one pass through, and the true “trea­sure” can only be obtained after let­ting go.

How­ev­er, what sur­prised me most about Rosen’s sub­ver­sion of clas­sic fairy tales was the re-set­tling of the miller’s son and the princess. Through the cat’s trans­for­ma­tion, they were unex­pect­ed­ly reborn, let­ting go of all the iden­ti­ties and des­tinies arranged for them by oth­ers. They no longer had to be mar­quis­es or princess­es, nor did they have to mar­ry a king. They only need­ed to be them­selves, ordi­nary but care­free Dave and Aisha, self-reliant, and even help­ing to clean up the garbage in this beau­ti­ful world… Thus, Rosen nat­u­ral­ly incor­po­rat­ed the increas­ing­ly impor­tant issue of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.

Rosen’s han­dling of the end­ing is quite bold. Gas­ton painstak­ing­ly returns to the “beau­ti­ful” beach of his child­hood mem­o­ries, only to find it lit­tered with garbage and pol­lut­ed beyond recog­ni­tion. So, does such an adven­ture still have any mean­ing? Can they “live hap­pi­ly ever after”? I think Rosen’s ded­i­cat­ing this sto­ry to lit­tle Emile must have had a spe­cial pur­pose.

Look­ing back, the sto­ry’s over­all tone is humor­ous and cheer­ful, full of exot­ic charm, and for young read­ers in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, it even serves as a way to learn a lit­tle French. It’s worth not­ing that Rosen has had a strong “French cul­tur­al affin­i­ty” since child­hood. As a child, his par­ents often took him and his broth­er to France for sum­mers; one sum­mer when he was 15, he even par­tic­i­pat­ed in a six-week sum­mer camp in France alone, speak­ing and think­ing entire­ly in French, because he per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced that some things could only be under­stood in French!

As an adult, he main­tained a deep inter­est in France, and in 2017 he pub­lished a unique biog­ra­phy, *The Dis­ap­pear­ance of Émile Zola: Love, Lit­er­a­ture and the Drey­fus Case*, recount­ing the life of the great French writer Émile Zola dur­ing his exile in Eng­land due to his oppo­si­tion to anti-Semi­tism. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, Zola’s name was also Émile! Rosen ded­i­cat­ed the book pri­mar­i­ly to his cur­rent wife, Emma, and their two chil­dren, Elsie and Emile. In fact, as ear­ly as 2008, Michael Rosen was award­ed the French Order of Arts and Let­ters by the French Min­istry of Cul­ture for the influ­ence of his work in France.

How­ev­er, the deep­est part of his “French sen­ti­ment” is hid­den in the ded­i­ca­tion page of the book recount­ing Zola’s life: “This book is ded­i­cat­ed to Oscar, Rachel, and Mar­tin Rosen. They per­ished in an era in France when Zola’s appeals against anti-Semi­tism were ignored by those in pow­er.” It turns out that Oscar and Mar­tin were Michael’s father’s two uncles, and Rachel was Oscar’s wife. They orig­i­nal­ly lived in France but dis­ap­peared com­plete­ly dur­ing World War II because of their Jew­ish iden­ti­ty. Michael spent many years search­ing for them, final­ly pub­lish­ing a book in 2020 titled *The Miss­ing: The True Sto­ry of My Fam­i­ly in World War II*. In short, Oscar, Rachel, and Mar­tin Rosen all hid in France for a peri­od, but were even­tu­al­ly cap­tured and sent to Auschwitz, nev­er to be heard from again. After years of effort, Rosen per­sis­tent­ly traced the escape route of the Oscars: Sedan—Niort—Nice, where they were arrest­ed in the beau­ti­ful French sea­side city of Nice. The most bizarre thing is that Oscar was born in Auschwitz, and at the end of his life, he “returned home” in such a trag­ic way—the begin­ning of life was also the des­ti­na­tion of death.

The books men­tioned above, along with the sto­ry of Gas­ton the dog, are all ded­i­cat­ed to Emile, demon­strat­ing that this “sto­ry­teller dad” is par­tic­u­lar­ly earnest and hon­est. He does­n’t want to shy away from the poten­tial­ly unpleas­ant aspects of real life for his chil­dren, nor does he want to weave a “pure and beau­ti­ful” fairy­tale end­ing. Indeed, it’s a won­drous adven­ture that can trans­form an ordi­nary per­son into a hero, but it does­n’t promise a hap­py end­ing. Return­ing after get­ting lost is sim­ply return­ing to the start­ing point.

The main sig­nif­i­cance of this won­drous adven­ture may sim­ply be that it teach­es us what true trea­sure is. How­ev­er, as Gas­ton the dog says, “We still have a lot to do…” but it requires every­one’s par­tic­i­pa­tion to achieve “hap­pi­ly ever after.”

Of course, this is also what Rosen want­ed to say.

Writ­ten by Ajia on August 8, 2025 in Bei­jing.