Instead of fearing the darkness, why not dive deep and explore its wonders…

This book, *Dive, Dive into the Night Sea*, was actu­al­ly Lu Xinyuan’s debut work, com­plet­ed dur­ing her mas­ter’s the­sis project in the UK. The Eng­lish ver­sion (Dive, Dive into the Night Sea) was also pub­lished in 2024 by Walk­er Pub­lish­ing (the same com­pa­ny that pub­lished *Guess How Much I Love You*), and was select­ed for…Longlist for the 2025 Carnegie Illus­tra­tion AwardsInter­na­tion­al crit­ics have giv­en this book high praise, describ­ing its “inge­nious struc­ture that sparks the read­er’s curios­i­ty, and its use of mut­ed grays and deep blues to cre­ate an irre­sistible atmos­phere of mys­tery dur­ing a night­time dive”; oth­ers have laud­ed it as “an escape pod to an incred­i­ble world—a sto­ry with­in a sto­ry that inspires won­der and inspi­ra­tion. A book of mag­ic, a spe­cial book, a book for every­one, for every place.” These acco­lades high­light Lu Xinyuan’s cre­ativ­i­ty and pro­found poten­tial in the field of pic­ture books.

Lu XinyuanThe ori­gins of this book were detailed in his blog.（https://titantable.substack.com/p/c2b).Her inspi­ra­tion came from her own real-life night div­ing expe­ri­ence, and coin­ci­den­tal­ly, she had just begun to explore and study dry­point print­ing. “The mem­o­ry of my recent night dive was still fresh, and I felt that dry­point print­ing was per­fect for depict­ing the rough tex­ture of the ocean filled with plank­ton at night.” How­ev­er, when she excit­ed­ly com­plet­ed a set of dry­point prints depict­ing the night ocean, ready to sub­mit it as her grad­u­a­tion project, her advi­sor told her that it need­ed to be made into an entire book! This might have ini­tial­ly been an unex­pect­ed chal­lenge, but after prepar­ing a wealth of mate­ri­als and pon­der­ing it repeat­ed­ly for many days, the title and the cen­tral sen­tence seemed to auto­mat­i­cal­ly spring to mind:“Dive, dive, dive into the night sea. Dive into the inky depth.”(This can be trans­lat­ed lit­er­al­ly as: dive, dive, dive into the night sea. Dive into that deep, inky black­ness.) The struc­ture of the entire book is also becom­ing clear.

The book’s suc­cess large­ly stems from its unique and inge­nious design. Its uncon­ven­tion­al ver­ti­cal page-turn­ing for­mat, with pages flipped from top to bot­tom, per­fect­ly sim­u­lates the phys­i­cal move­ments and per­spec­tive changes of a div­er, allow­ing read­ers to tru­ly expe­ri­ence the immer­sive feel­ing of a sub­mersible. The con­tent is also care­ful­ly arranged, actu­al­ly divid­ed into two main sec­tions: one part offers the diver’s per­spec­tive on mind and body, expressed through extreme­ly con­cise and beau­ti­ful poet­ry, cre­at­ing a tran­quil and pro­found emo­tion­al atmos­phere; the oth­er part pro­vides pre­cise and engag­ing infor­ma­tion about marine life, with rich details that allow read­ers to expe­ri­ence the rig­or and enjoy­ment of non-fic­tion sci­ence fic­tion. This clever fusion of nar­ra­tive and sci­ence achieves a del­i­cate bal­ance between knowl­edge and artistry, sat­is­fy­ing the curios­i­ty of chil­dren while also cap­ti­vat­ing adult read­ers with a dream­like visu­al expe­ri­ence.

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In fact, using dark col­ors as the main tone in chil­dren’s pic­ture books is often not very appeal­ing, so it’s some­what risky. How­ev­er, this book, with its deep blue and gray-black tones, exquis­ite­ly recre­ates the envi­ron­ment of the night sea through a well-struc­tured and rhyth­mic approach, mak­ing the dark tones both tan­gi­ble and endear­ing. For exam­ple, the open­ing scene shows a bright sea and a small boat; as each page turns, the light grad­u­al­ly dims, and a div­er leaps into the water from the bright moon­light, pass­ing through schools of fish on the sur­face and enter­ing the dark abyss. Each page is a deep dive, and with each turn, the read­er delves deep­er. The illus­tra­tions use a large amount of dense­ly woven tex­ture, giv­ing a sense of flow­ing sea­wa­ter and shim­mer­ing waves. The only light is a beam of yel­low light from the diver’s flash­light. This beam of light acts as a guide in the dark­ness; wher­ev­er it reach­es, fish, corals, plank­ton, and sperm whales appear, as if awak­ened by the light. Here, light is not mere­ly a phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­non, but a metaphor for hope, a call­ing, and the per­cep­tion of life.

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The book’s flip-page design is also inge­nious. The flips aren’t in fixed posi­tions, and the shapes of the flaps seem some­what ran­dom. But upon clos­er inspec­tion, you’ll dis­cov­er the artist’s inge­nu­ity: the flip points are often illu­mi­nat­ed by yel­low light (or cor­re­spond­ing areas), and the shapes of the flaps are often relat­ed to the marine life depict­ed on that page. These sub­tle changes bring sur­pris­es at every turn. I believe young read­ers will derive con­sid­er­able enjoy­ment from this whim­si­cal “flip-page” design, bal­anc­ing the poten­tial “seri­ous­ness” of read­ing sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion. Frankly, some of the infor­ma­tion is some­what obscure, but this only adds to the sense of mys­tery. Through these clever designs, the book, with its extreme­ly restrained lan­guage and col­ors, cre­ates an incred­i­bly rich sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence, guid­ing read­ers with a beam of light to dis­cov­er hid­den won­ders of life in the dark­ness.

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Lu Xinyuan’s three pub­lished books, all fea­tur­ing her own writ­ing and illus­tra­tions, show­case inge­nious design ideas. For exam­ple, in *Here, There*, she uses fold-out pages and sym­met­ri­cal struc­tures to express spa­tial dif­fer­ences and cul­tur­al sim­i­lar­i­ties, with the two pro­tag­o­nists ulti­mate­ly meet­ing on a dou­ble-page spread. In *Insect Artists*, she suc­cess­ful­ly sim­u­lates the var­i­ous forms of insects eat­ing leaves in nature by using per­fo­ra­tion and die-cut­ting tech­niques on top of sin­gle-pan­el prints. In this book depict­ing night div­ing, she explores and exper­i­ments with the tra­di­tion­al print­ing tech­nique of dry engrav­ing, com­ple­ment­ed by flip-page and flap designs. The result­ing fuzzy, blurred, and warm print­mak­ing style proved high­ly suit­able for cap­tur­ing the unique atmos­phere of deep-sea night div­ing, and the flap design per­fect­ly suit­ed the activ­i­ty of deep-sea explo­ration. This young artist demon­strates a keen artis­tic intu­ition in her choice of tech­niques, suc­cess­ful­ly and vivid­ly express­ing the soft­ness of the water, the hazy light, and the mys­te­ri­ous, elu­sive nature of life dur­ing a night dive. The near-per­fect fusion of artis­tic expres­sion and con­tent is what left a strong impres­sion on me about Lu Xinyuan.

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How­ev­er, what’s even more inter­est­ing is that this work evoked some unex­pect­ed asso­ci­a­tions in me. For exam­ple, in terms of poet­ic asso­ci­a­tions. The recur­ring phrase in the book, “Down, down, dive into the night sea…”, inevitably remind­ed me of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do not go gen­tle into that good night.” This poem was quot­ed mem­o­rable­ly in the film *Inter­stel­lar*, espe­cial­ly the last line, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” which res­onates rhyth­mi­cal­ly and evoca­tive­ly with “Dive, dive into the night sea.” The for­mer is a lament against death, espe­cial­ly a resent­ment and strug­gle against the pass­ing of “light”; while the lat­ter does­n’t choose to con­front dark­ness with “anger,” but rather uses curios­i­ty, sen­si­tiv­i­ty, and courage to active­ly enter and con­nect with it. The pic­ture book artist choos­es to embrace the vital­i­ty with­in the dark­ness, turn­ing to a more East­ern, gen­tle yet equal­ly coura­geous attitude—to delve, per­ceive, and con­nect.

As I neared the end, I read, “The ocean at night / is tru­ly like a world filled with dreams. / But / the time has come, / I must swim out of this dream.”“

The Eng­lish ver­sion is “The world of the night / sea is like a beau­ti­ful dream. / But the time has come for me to leave.” This reminds me of Robert Frost’s “Rest at the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” with its final lines, “But I have promis­es to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep…”—Immersed in the tran­quil, mys­te­ri­ous, and dream­like beau­ty of nature, one can be hyp­no­tized. But the trav­el­er, lost in its beau­ty, sud­den­ly real­izes that there are still respon­si­bil­i­ties, promis­es, and the jour­ney to con­tin­ue. Thus, they con­tin­ue their jour­ney or sur­face.

This fas­ci­na­tion with the deep sea reminds me of the French film “The Big Blue,” which I watched many times years ago. The pro­tag­o­nist, Jacques, ulti­mate­ly finds a stronger sense of belong­ing in deep-sea div­ing than on land—the seabed is dream­like, the dol­phins are like fam­i­ly, and the call from the ocean is a near-pri­mal emo­tion­al dimen­sion, full of poet­ic imagery. But when the deep-sea div­er in the pic­ture book sur­faces, I still feel incred­i­bly hap­py and relieved. The choice to return to real­i­ty and the choice to pre­serve the fairy­tale dream are not con­tra­dic­to­ry.

Such asso­ci­a­tions are clear­ly not char­ac­ter­is­tic of chil­dren’s read­ing respons­es, but I think this does­n’t pre­vent them from find­ing their own enjoy­ment in read­ing. I believe that Lu Xinyuan’s pic­ture books (not lim­it­ed to this one) can eas­i­ly tran­scend the bound­aries between chil­dren and adult read­ers, which is pre­cise­ly what makes them unique and rare. We can­not judge them as lack­ing “child­like­ness” sim­ply because adult read­ers make more asso­ci­a­tions with them.

Take, for exam­ple, the book *Dive Down, Dive into the Night Sea*. Its unique visu­al style, inge­nious book struc­ture, and pro­found emo­tion­al explo­ration can cer­tain­ly attract read­ers aged 3 to 99. Young chil­dren can expe­ri­ence the won­der of the under­wa­ter world through inter­ac­tive flip pages, while old­er chil­dren can con­tin­ue to explore relat­ed marine life knowl­edge through the flaps. This immer­sive expe­ri­ence can great­ly stim­u­late chil­dren’s curios­i­ty and spir­it of explo­ration, while poten­tial­ly reduc­ing their fear of the dark. For adult read­ers, the book may offer a poet­ic philo­soph­i­cal reflec­tion, encour­ag­ing them to con­front their own fears and re-exam­ine and embrace the unknown world through the expe­ri­ence of deep-sea div­ing at night.

Just like the courage and wis­dom shown in the book—instead of fear­ing the dark­ness, dive deep into it to explore the hid­den mir­a­cles and end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of life.

Writ­ten by A‑Jia on May 3, 2025 in Bei­jing

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