Bridge of Ajia

Tag: book review

  • 唤起生命活力的善良与野性的魔法——评张奕颖自写自画的两部作品

    The Magic of Kindness and Wildness That Awakens the Vitality of Life — A Review of Two Author-Illustrated Works by Gracey Zhang

    Children’s kind­ness and wild­ness are, at their core, com­ple­men­tary forces—both are essen­tial ele­ments in awak­en­ing the vital­i­ty of life.

    Cov­er of the Chi­nese ver­sion of “Lara’s Words ”

    Gracey Zhang has quick­ly emerged in the field of chil­dren’s books with her unique visu­al style and del­i­cate abil­i­ty to cap­ture emo­tions. Her debut pic­ture­book “Lala’s Words”, pub­lished in 2021, was eye-catch­ing and won the indus­try’s pres­ti­gious Ezra Jack Keates Illus­tra­tion Award in 2022. In recent years, Gracey Zhang has col­lab­o­rat­ed with authors on at least six pic­ture books, all of which have been wide­ly praised. Among them, The Upside Down Hat (writ­ten by Steven Balt­sar) and Nigel and the Moon (writ­ten by Antwan Eady) have already been pub­lished in Chi­nese edi­tions. How­ev­er, it is her author-illus­trat­ed works that remain the most com­pelling. Her sec­ond solo title, When Rubin Plays, will soon be intro­duced to Chi­nese read­ers along­side her debut, Lala’s Words.

    When Rubin Plays

    Lala, as described by Gracey Zhang, is a Chi­nese immi­grant girl who is ener­getic and kind-heart­ed. In her moth­er’s eyes, she is a lit­tle “wild”. She is always unwill­ing to stay at home and would rather spend the whole day with wild flow­ers and weeds. What her moth­er can­not under­stand is that Lala actu­al­ly express­es her love for the world through “dia­logue” with plants. “Lala’s Mag­ic Words” not only shows Lala’s unique con­nec­tion with nature, but also con­veys the pow­er of lan­guage and the heal­ing pow­er of kind­ness. “When Rubin Plays” focus­es on the growth of a local Boli­vian boy, Rubin. The back­ground is set in a small town on the edge of a “wild” for­est. Rubin con­ducts his own musi­cal explo­ration with the help of ani­mals, high­light­ing the joy of free and unre­strained self-expres­sion. Both books explore the impact of cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences on indi­vid­ual growth and show the “mag­ic” of the coex­is­tence of kind­ness and wild­ness in chil­dren’s hearts.

    Cov­er of the Chi­nese ver­sion of “Snowy Day”

    Pic­ture book enthu­si­asts may be more famil­iar with Ezra Jack Keats (1916–1983), who cre­at­ed clas­sic works such as “The Snowy Day”, “Peter’s Chair”, “Whis­tle for Willie” and “Gog­gles”. Born into a Jew­ish immi­grant fam­i­ly, Keats brought a unique sen­si­tiv­i­ty to chil­dren grow­ing up in diverse cul­tur­al back­grounds. His most cel­e­brat­ed works focus on a young Black boy named Peter, and these stories—widely acclaimed and award-winning—significantly trans­formed the land­scape of pic­ture book pub­lish­ing. The pres­ti­gious award named in his hon­or rec­og­nizes artists who make out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to diver­si­ty and inclu­sion in children’s literature—an ethos that Gracey Zhang’s work embod­ies with remark­able clar­i­ty and warmth.

    Unique illustration style

    How­ev­er, for most West­ern read­ers, the most attrac­tive thing about “Lara’s Words” is the per­fect match between its illus­tra­tion style and the sto­ry itself. The New York Times book review praised its unique illus­tra­tion style, “blend­ing warm­heart­ed mlti­eth­nic urban car­i­ca­ture with a bold-lined rough-and-tum­ble zeal, is whol­ly orig­i­nal.” And Kirkus Reviews com­ment­ed: “Lala’s enthu­si­asm blos­soms on the page.” Paul Swydan, the own­er of the The Sil­ver Uni­corn Book­store, exclaimed: “This pic­ture book is breath­tak­ing, and Zhang’s use of col­or real­ly helps the sto­ry come alive. It’s like a mod­ern inverse of The Giv­ing Tree .”

    ​The rea­son why I asso­ciate with The Giv­ing Tree is that, visu­al­ly speak­ing, it is main­ly the use of black and white line draw­ings. Both books are full of emo­tion and ten­sion. But why is it a “inverse”? On the one hand, The Giv­ing Tree is actu­al­ly the process of a tree that keeps giv­ing and turns into an old stump, and the life fades away. How­ev­er, Lala uses her lan­guage mag­ic to make her “amaz­ing” plant friends real­ize the “amaz­ing” life bloom. On the oth­er hand, Lala’s Words still adds bright and warm col­ors, mak­ing peo­ple feel the vital­i­ty of life, as if there is real­ly mag­ic.

    The inside page of the Chi­nese ver­sion of “Lara’s Words”

    I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask Gracey ques­tions via email. Two of the ques­tions were: Why does this book use only sim­ple yel­low and green col­ors, but still leave a deep impres­sion? Why is Lala yel­low? Gracey’s answers were:“I’ve always loved black and white art, and yel­low just seemed to be the right colour for Lala. Sun­shine, run­ny egg yolks, flower pollen, and hazy sum­mer days.“Of course, I agree with the artist’s answer. But the yel­low labia also reminds me of the lit­tle girl in yel­low clothes in “Stone Soup”, the descen­dants of the drag­on with yel­low skin, and the noble yel­low that could only be used by the roy­al fam­i­ly dur­ing the impe­r­i­al peri­od…

    The Fan Broth­ers, also Chi­nese pic­ture book artists, cre­at­ed “The Night Gar­den­er”, “Ocean Meets Sky” and “The Barnabus Project” which are also very pop­u­lar in Chi­na. They also praised:“Lala’s Words is real­ly about mag­ic; a spe­cial kind of mag­ic called kind­ness. Like the sun­light and falling rain, kind­ness nour­ish­es the world around us. This book, with its love­ly art and whim­si­cal sto­ry, will also nour­ish the read­er.”

    About the magic of mother-daughter communication mode

    Although this can be said to be an excit­ing “mag­i­cal” sto­ry, the way the moth­er in the book spoke to Lala also made me read some­thing that might be eas­i­er for Chi­nese peo­ple to read. I could­n’t help but ask the author in an email: “Does this sto­ry have some kind of per­son­al expe­ri­ence? Although I am very hap­py to see that Lala final­ly changed her moth­er, Lala’s moth­er always reminds me of the more neg­a­tive com­ments that many Chi­nese moth­ers often use on their chil­dren…”

    Zhang’s response was straight­for­ward and warm:“Also you’re com­plete­ly accu­rate with your par­al­lels. I wrote Lala’s Words dur­ing a peri­od of ten­sion with my moth­er when our rela­tion­ship was more rocky than usu­al. I was reflect­ing on how we related/talked/communicated with each oth­er and how far back this mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion went to child­hood and more. I sup­pose writ­ing and illus­trat­ing the sto­ry was a way to show her how I was feel­ing with­out hav­ing to go through anoth­er dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion. Like I was say­ing “here read this, this is how I feel.””——It was a per­fect idea to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly with my moth­er by writ­ing a book. At the end of the book, moth­er and daugh­ter not only rec­on­ciled, but also expressed deep love for each oth­er.

    I lat­er found Zhang’s accep­tance speech when she accept­ed the award online in 2022. She specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned:“ Lala’s Words is a sto­ry that I wrote from my own expe­ri­ence grow­ing up with my moth­er, a sto­ry that spoke to a lot of fears and mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion between a lot of immi­grant moth­ers and chil­dren. All the things that go unsaid or are said. I real­ized it was­n’t just me and my moth­er, but it was a pat­tern of gen­er­a­tional com­mu­ni­ca­tion and rela­tion­ships between her moth­er and all the moth­ers before that. ”——I would like to say that this is also the deep­er lev­el of lan­guage mag­ic that touched me about this book.

    Diverse visual expressions

    “Lara’s Words” is some­what auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, while “When Rubin Plays” is more free and unre­strained. In her debut pic­ture book, Gracey Zhang adopts a min­i­mal­ist illus­tra­tion style—predominantly black-and-white linework accent­ed with touch­es of col­or. This restrained visu­al lan­guage not only high­lights the emo­tion­al core of the sto­ry but also deep­ens Lala’s con­nec­tion with the world around her through its ele­gant sim­plic­i­ty. In con­trast, her sec­ond author-illus­trat­ed work bursts with rich, vivid col­ors. Set in the emo­tion­al­ly vibrant land­scape of Latin Amer­i­ca, the sto­ry teems with the wild vital­i­ty of nature and the pulse of music. The illus­tra­tions are sat­u­rat­ed with bold reds, oranges, greens, and blues. At the story’s climax—where Rubin’s music reach­es a fever pitch and ani­mals whirl through the scene—the imagery explodes into a daz­zling spec­ta­cle of sound and motion, leav­ing read­ers almost breath­less with its exu­ber­ance.

    Through her mas­ter­ful use of col­or, Gracey Zhang demon­strates a remark­able abil­i­ty to adapt visu­al ele­ments to suit the emo­tion­al tone and cul­tur­al con­text of each sto­ry. Her seam­less inte­gra­tion of visu­al art and nar­ra­tive text infus­es her works with a dis­tinct emo­tion­al res­o­nance. Beyond enhanc­ing the visu­al appeal, her thought­ful inter­play of col­or and line deep­ens the the­mat­ic lay­ers of her sto­ry­telling, allow­ing the illus­tra­tions to echo and expand upon the emo­tion­al heart of the tale.

    Though dif­fer­ent in plot and set­ting, both of Gracey Zhang’s books reveal a kind of “mag­ic” that lives with­in every child. In Lala’s Words, Lala’s gen­tle words and qui­et care breathe life into the plants she loves—a mag­ic root­ed in kind­ness, show­ing how lan­guage can shape and trans­form the world. In When Rubin Plays, Rubin dis­cov­ers his mag­ic through music—a mag­ic born of his yearn­ing for self-expres­sion and his deep love for sound and rhythm. Each child, in their own way, taps into a pow­er­ful inner force that brings vital­i­ty and won­der to the world around them.

    The magic that can change the world

    Though these two forms of mag­ic may appear dif­fer­ent on the sur­face, they both arise from the same source: the puri­ty and strength at the heart of a child. In essence, a child’s kind­ness and wild­ness are not oppo­sites but com­ple­men­tary forces—each essen­tial to awak­en­ing the vital­i­ty of life. In Gracey Zhang’s hands, kind­ness and wild­ness are nev­er in con­flict; instead, they coex­ist as the most pre­cious ele­ments of a child’s spir­it. It is through this unique blend of gen­tle­ness and untamed ener­gy that chil­dren unleash their truest vital­i­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty.

    It is tru­ly heart­en­ing to see a new star ris­ing on the glob­al pic­ture book stage—Gracey Zhang, a gift­ed Chi­nese Cana­di­an illus­tra­tor and sto­ry­teller. Her unique cul­tur­al back­ground gives her a dis­tinct per­spec­tive on the world, allow­ing her to reflect on her own upbring­ing while embrac­ing a broad­er, more inclu­sive view of human­i­ty. Through her work, she reveals the “mag­ic” with­in the world of children—a mag­ic that doesn’t just dwell in kind­ness or wild­ness alone, but thrives in their har­mo­nious coex­is­tence. Her sto­ries cel­e­brate this dual­i­ty, cap­tur­ing the vibrant, com­plex spir­it of child­hood with remark­able grace and vision.

    I believe this dual kind of “mag­ic” holds the pow­er to awak­en the deep­est vital­i­ty of life—not only trans­form­ing the worlds with­in sto­ries, but also leav­ing a last­ing impact on read­ers, both young and old.

    Ajia writ­ten in Bei­jing on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2024

  • 读新书《地球升起》有感

    Thoughts on reading the new book Earthrise

    I fin­ished read­ing a new book by Leonard S. Mar­cus over the week­end: “Earth­rise: The Sto­ry of the Pho­to­graph That Changed the Way We See Our Plan­et”

    This book was just released in the U.S. on March 4, 2025. It’s avail­able on Kin­dle, and the title could be trans­lat­ed into Chi­nese as 《地球升起：一张改变人类视野的照片》. The term Earth­rise is quite inter­est­ing — it par­al­lels Sun­rise and Moon­rise, which would sug­gest trans­lat­ing it as “地出” (like “日出”), but that sounds odd. Trans­lat­ing it as “地球崛起” (like Rise of the Plan­et of the Apes) would be strange too. So I’d say just go with “地球升起,” which reflects the orig­i­nal name of the icon­ic pho­to fea­tured on the cov­er.

    Earth­rise cov­er

    As a children’s book his­to­ri­an, Mar­cus has writ­ten sev­er­al his­to­ry books for young read­ers. Earth­rise fol­lows the same nar­ra­tive approach as his pre­vi­ous work, “Mr. Lin­coln Sits for His Por­trait” (2023) — using a sin­gle famous pho­to­graph as an entry point to explore the deep­er his­tor­i­cal con­text behind it.

    To put it sim­ply, Earth­rise tells the sto­ry of the icon­ic pho­to tak­en on Christ­mas Eve, 1968, dur­ing the Apol­lo 8 mis­sion by astro­naut Bill Anders as he orbit­ed the Moon. This pho­to shows the Earth ris­ing over the Moon’s hori­zon — one of the most con­se­quen­tial and wide­ly viewed images in human his­to­ry. Mar­cus unpacks the sto­ry behind this pho­to, com­bin­ing vivid details, his­tor­i­cal con­text, and per­son­al per­spec­tives to reveal how it changed humanity’s under­stand­ing of our place in the uni­verse.

    Mar­cus is a mas­ter sto­ry­teller. He opens the book with a com­pelling idea: this pho­to changed how we see our­selves and our plan­et. From there, he skill­ful­ly unrav­els a nar­ra­tive full of ten­sion and con­flict — start­ing with the Cold War space race, includ­ing the Sovi­et Union’s launch of the first satel­lite, Sput­nik; Yuri Gagarin becom­ing the first human in space; and Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s dec­la­ra­tion of the Moon land­ing goal. Mar­cus main­tains a brisk, engag­ing pace, punc­tu­at­ing the nar­ra­tive with rare his­tor­i­cal images and detailed accounts of the per­son­al sac­ri­fices made by the astro­nauts and their fam­i­lies.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, Mar­cus begins the book by refer­ring to the “Sput­nik moment” — a term that has recent­ly resur­faced in the wake of DeepSeek’s suc­cess. Some West­ern media out­lets have described DeepSeek’s break­through as a new “Sput­nik moment.” But what does this real­ly mean for human­i­ty? Mar­cus’s account of the orig­i­nal “Sput­nik moment” invites us to reflect on how tech­no­log­i­cal rival­ry can dri­ve both com­pe­ti­tion and coop­er­a­tion — just as the Cold War space race even­tu­al­ly gave way to space col­lab­o­ra­tion in the 1970s.

    How exact­ly did Earth­rise change human­i­ty’s view of the world — even our world­view? I recall that a glob­al his­to­ri­an once sug­gest­ed that we could try to rewrite human his­to­ry from the per­spec­tive of stand­ing on the Moon and look­ing back at Earth.

    Bill Anders, the astro­naut who took the icon­ic pho­to, famous­ly said: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most impor­tant thing is that we dis­cov­ered the Earth.” This was a com­plete­ly new per­spec­tive. For the first time, human­i­ty saw Earth not as a vast, end­less expanse — but as a small, frag­ile, and beau­ti­ful plan­et. It inspired humil­i­ty and awe.

    Mar­cus also point­ed out that the “Earth­rise” pho­to made peo­ple feel the unique­ness and pre­cious­ness of the Earth. The visu­al impact of view­ing the Earth from the lunar orbit prompt­ed peo­ple to have a strong “home con­scious­ness” and rethink the def­i­n­i­tion of “home”. Anoth­er astro­naut, Jim Lovell, could com­plete­ly cov­er the Earth by block­ing the win­dow with his fin­gers. This sim­ple action made him deeply feel the small­ness and lone­li­ness of the Earth:

    ” Just think, over five bil­lion peo­ple, every­thing I ever knew was behind my thumb.”

    Earth­rise is not just a pho­to­graph; it’s a metaphor. It reminds human­i­ty that we are all pas­sen­gers on “Space­ship Earth,” a frag­ile and lim­it­ed ves­sel that we must pro­tect togeth­er. The idea of “Space­ship Earth” sharp­ened humanity’s aware­ness of lim­it­ed resources and envi­ron­men­tal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. It rein­forced the idea that we are not just cit­i­zens of indi­vid­ual nations, but mem­bers of a shared glob­al com­mu­ni­ty with a col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty.

    One of my favorite lines from the book comes from Jim Lovell’s real­iza­tion: “Then I remem­bered a say­ing I often heard: ‘I hope I go to Heav­en when I die.’ I sud­den­ly real­ized that I went to Heav­en when I was born! I arrived on a plan­et with the prop­er mass to have the grav­i­ty to con­tain water and an atmos­phere, the essen­tials for life. I arrived on a plan­et orbit­ing a star at just the right dis­tance to absorb that star’s energy—energy that caused life to evolve in the begin­ning.”

    Yes, peo­ple on Earth imag­ine that Heav­en is such a won­der­ful place, but in fact, we have been in Heav­en since the moment we were born!

    Many peo­ple think that the Earth is not so good any­more and are ready to migrate to oth­er plan­ets, but think about it, which plan­et is more suit­able for “Earth­lings” than Earth? Instead of try­ing to migrate, it is bet­ter to try not to destroy the Earth, right?

    Hav­ing fol­lowed Mar­cus’s work for some time, I think the core mes­sage of Earth­rise is this: Earth­rise is not just a famous pho­to­graph — it’s a sym­bol that reminds human­i­ty to re-eval­u­ate the plan­et we inhab­it. It reveals Earth’s iso­la­tion and unique­ness in the uni­verse and chal­lenges us to embrace a mind­set of glob­al care, peace, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

    Think about it, if peo­ple stay in a vil­lage for their whole lives, the peo­ple in the vil­lage on the oth­er side of the riv­er may be “ene­mies”. But if you run a thou­sand kilo­me­ters away and look back, the peo­ple in the next vil­lage are “fel­low vil­lagers”. When fel­low vil­lagers meet, their eyes are filled with tears. If peo­ple stay in the same coun­try for their whole lives, is there a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion? When we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn a few som­er­saults and run to space hun­dreds of thou­sands of miles away, the peo­ple in the “ene­my coun­try” become neigh­bors and fel­low vil­lagers. When we meet, won’t our eyes be filled with tears?

    How do we see the world, how do we see our­selves? — It depends on where you stand.

    Final­ly, I’d like to note the book’s ded­i­ca­tion (which I almost missed): “In Mem­o­ry of Amy Schwartz—Shining Light, Beau­ti­ful Spir­it”

    Amy Schwartz (April 2, 1954 – Feb­ru­ary 26, 2023) was Mar­cus’s late wife. The ded­i­ca­tion car­ries a qui­et yet pro­found sense of loss and remem­brance — a reminder that, just as human­i­ty must cher­ish the Earth, we must also trea­sure the peo­ple and mem­o­ries that give mean­ing to our lives.

    Ajia writ­ten on March 10, 2025

  • 闲聊李奥尼的人生花絮

    Talking about Leo Lionni’s life

    The orig­i­nal text was writ­ten in Chi­nese on March 8, 2010, as a post­script to Leo Lion­ni’s series of trans­la­tions, and was also pub­lished on Sina Blog.

    Over the past year or so, Leo Lion­ni has occu­pied a very impor­tant posi­tion in my life. I often repeat what he said, put one or two of his books in my bag wher­ev­er I go, and search for all the infor­ma­tion about him when­ev­er I think of him… But more often, I will stare at the pages where he wrote and drew for a long time, think­ing absent­mind­ed­ly: What on earth is this guy try­ing to say here?

    I feel very lucky to have trans­lat­ed nine of Lion­ni’s pic­ture books in more than a year. It is very sat­is­fy­ing to have in-depth exchanges with this mas­ter in this way. As the trans­la­tion work is com­ing to an end, the edi­tor asked me to write a lit­tle about Lion­ni, but for a long time I did­n’t know where to start. Every­thing about Leo Lion­ni is there, in his books: the lit­tle black fish, Alfred, Cor­nelius, Matthew, Alexan­der… They are all him, what else is there to say? I will talk about some anec­dotes in Lion­ni’s life — main­ly those that have had some influ­ence on my under­stand­ing in trans­la­tion.

    On a warm day about thir­ty years ago, in a farm­house in Tus­cany, Italy, an old man in his sev­en­ties was chat­ting with some­one on the phone, but his mind grad­u­al­ly wan­dered, and he was seen scrib­bling on a notepad. The draw­ing looked like the graf­fi­ti of naughty chil­dren. It was rough­ly a lizard, and it looked like a croc­o­dile when you looked left and right, but from the per­spec­tive of nat­ur­al sci­ence, it was nei­ther, because it was a rep­tile that walked upright! It is said that this is how Lion­ni’s “Cor­nelius” the Croc­o­dile was first cre­at­ed.

    When I first came across this book, I want­ed to trans­late Cor­nelius as “鳄鱼小克 Croc­o­dile Lit­tle K”, per­haps chil­dren would like it more. But as I learned more about Lion­ni, this name seemed to have a deep­er mean­ing. On the sur­face, it is just sim­i­lar to croc­o­dile, but if you think about it care­ful­ly, it is a com­mon name in Italy, and the most famous one is usu­al­ly trans­lat­ed as Cor­nelius, a cen­tu­ri­on in the New Tes­ta­ment of the Bible, and the first non-Jew to con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty. Is this just a coin­ci­dence? To be hon­est, I don’t know, but I think it’s bet­ter to keep the name Cor­nelius for this unique croc­o­dile, and leave the judg­ment of whether it is a coin­ci­dence to the read­ers.

    Italy is Lion­ni’s sec­ond home.

    He set foot on this land when he was 15 years old. Before that, he went to high school in Philadel­phia, USA for one or two years, and even ear­li­er in Ams­ter­dam, his home­town in the Nether­lands. He com­plet­ed his stud­ies in Italy and obtained a doc­tor­ate in eco­nom­ics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Genoa with a the­sis on the jew­el­ry trade. Although he was bet­ter at paint­ing and design­ing, it was not dif­fi­cult for him to com­plete such a the­sis because his father was a jew­el­ry design­er and a Sephardic Jew.

    At the age of 16, he met his oth­er half, Nora Maf­fei, there. Five years lat­er, they got mar­ried and stayed togeth­er for life. His father-in-law was one of the founders of the Ital­ian Com­mu­nist Par­ty. When Leo met Nora, Mr. Maf­fei had been under house arrest and impris­oned because the Ital­ian Com­mu­nist Par­ty was being per­se­cut­ed by Mus­solin­i’s dic­ta­tor­ship. This polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion had a strong impact on Leo, because not long ago he was still play­ing bas­ket­ball freely in a mid­dle school in Philadel­phia.

    Still in Italy, Leo began his career as an artist and design­er. His slight­ly man­ic paint­ings in his youth were high­ly regard­ed by the lead­ing futur­ist poet Marinet­ti, and were rec­om­mend­ed to tour around Italy. He was even hailed as “the direct descen­dant of the aero­dy­nam­ic paint­ing school” and “a great futur­ist.” Although he nev­er thought so, he believed that he was clos­er to the Dutch De Sti­jl and was a gen­uine Bauhau­sist in terms of design con­cepts. This style was vivid­ly dis­played in Lion­i’s first pic­ture book, Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low, and his late work, The Dream of Matthew, may be a more direct inter­pre­ta­tion of his artis­tic pur­suit. In that sto­ry, the sweet­heart (lat­er wife) of the mouse artist Matthew was named Nico­let­ta, who was also full of Ital­ian fla­vor.

    When the Nazis took con­trol of Italy, Leo, who was half Jew­ish, had to leave with his wife and chil­dren and go to the Unit­ed States across the ocean, where he achieved amaz­ing suc­cess. But about 20 years lat­er, he still decid­ed to come back and set­tle down again, as if this was the land he had been dream­ing of.

    When Leo Lion­ni was near­ly 50 years old, he was already suc­cess­ful. He had been famous in the adver­tis­ing design indus­try for a long time. Lat­er, he served as an Art direc­tor in the print­ing and mag­a­zine indus­tries. The most famous one was that he served as the design direc­tor of For­tune mag­a­zine for ten years. Dur­ing this peri­od, he also held his own per­son­al exhi­bi­tions and design exhi­bi­tions in Europe, Japan and the Unit­ed States many times. He once served as the pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Graph­ic Arts and served as the chair­man of the 1953 Inter­na­tion­al Design Con­fer­ence. In addi­tion, he had a bunch of titles that were too numer­ous to count. But at this time, he decid­ed to resign, take a break for a while, and then move to Italy. It is said that he has signed a con­tract to do design for a small mag­a­zine there, who knows what the name is! At least com­pared with his sit­u­a­tion in the Unit­ed States, the salary of the new posi­tion will be reduced to a neg­li­gi­ble amount. Peo­ple around Lion­ni were shocked: Is this guy men­tal­ly ill?

    Dur­ing this peri­od, a sto­ry that is well known to many read­ers who love Lionni’s pic­ture books hap­pened. Dur­ing a short train trip, Lion­ni told sto­ries to his 5‑year-old grand­son and 3‑year-old grand­daugh­ter using blocks of col­or torn from mag­a­zines. The won­der­ful sto­ry won the hearts of the chil­dren, and after some sort­ing and pro­duc­tion, it became the clas­sic “Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low”. From then on, Lion­ni had anoth­er iden­ti­ty: a mas­ter of chil­dren’s pic­ture books. This seems to be a pure­ly acci­den­tal event, but it is a nat­ur­al out­come for this artist who is slow­ing down and re-exam­in­ing his life. He closed a win­dow, and anoth­er door opened to him.

    Lion­ni’s pic­ture book edi­tor described his life and cre­ation in this way: Lion­ni divides his life into two worlds. He usu­al­ly stays in a farm in Tus­cany, Italy in spring and sum­mer, and comes to New York in autumn and win­ter. Most of his pic­ture books are com­plet­ed in a farm­house very close to nature, and he gets inspi­ra­tion from this nat­ur­al world. It is said that the inspi­ra­tion for “Swim­my” came from a pool of min­nows there, and the pro­to­type of the field mouse Fred­er­ick orig­i­nal­ly appeared in his gar­den. The lit­tle field mouse poet always med­i­tates on his own, col­lect­ing sun­light, col­ors and words, and when it is spe­cial, it gives peo­ple warmth and mag­ic in a spe­cial way. That is anoth­er state of exis­tence, per­haps one that is clos­er to the essence. Is this what Lion­ni col­lect­ed in spring and sum­mer and brought to New York in win­ter?

    His edi­tor was very impressed that Leo seemed to have not been influ­enced by the tra­di­tion­al chil­dren’s book indus­try in his pic­ture book cre­ation, and the rela­tion­ship between him and the edi­tor was also unique. Leo was nat­u­ral­ly will­ing to tell the edi­tor what ideas his next book might be based on, but no one knew the spe­cif­ic con­tent of the book until he took the fin­ished book to the pub­lish­er. Leo was very con­fi­dent that his near­ly per­fect cre­ations could sur­prise every­one, and in fact, it was true every time. The artist and design mas­ter even designed the fonts. He always chose a very old-fash­ioned font (Cen­tu­ry School­book) because he felt that this print­ed font was most eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able to chil­dren. As for what font size to choose and where to put it on the page, the design­er had already care­ful­ly arranged it.

    Peo­ple often talk more about Lion­ni’s paint­ings, but he is also very par­tic­u­lar about words. Edi­tors praised him as the “Aesop of the 20th cen­tu­ry”. In addi­tion to prais­ing the pro­found mean­ing of his sto­ries, they also praised his con­cise, clear and poet­ic words. Although the words in his pic­ture books can be read or under­stood by chil­dren direct­ly, they are not the kind of tone that is specif­i­cal­ly spo­ken to chil­dren, because his sto­ries are told to every­one. When I repeat­ed­ly pon­der the seem­ing­ly sim­ple words writ­ten by Lion­ni, some­times I feel that they are quite old-fash­ioned, more like Euro­pean Eng­lish than Amer­i­can Eng­lish. Its strict gram­mar is a mod­el, but its choice of words is very per­son­al. He does not seem to choose some com­mon words as a mat­ter of course, but prefers to choose some more orig­i­nal and inter­est­ing words with more sym­bol­ic mean­ings.

    Once, in a con­ver­sa­tion with the Japan­ese pub­lish­er Mr. Tadashi Mat­sui about Leo Lionni’s pic­ture books, he offered two fas­ci­nat­ing insights. First, he believed that all of Lionni’s books revolve around a sin­gle fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: “Who am I?” Sec­ond, Lion­ni had stud­ied a branch of Hin­duism in depth, which had a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on his cre­ative work. The first insight, in par­tic­u­lar, great­ly helps us under­stand Lionni’s body of work as a whole. For exam­ple, Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low can be seen as a sto­ry of the dis­so­lu­tion and ref­or­ma­tion of the self; Swim­my is about a leader with­in a col­lec­tive; Cor­nelius is a pio­neer ahead of his time; Fred­er­ick is a poet with mag­i­cal pow­ers; Matthew’s Dream tells of an artist dis­cov­er­ing both the world and him­self. And sto­ries like Alexan­der and the Wind-Up Mouse, A Col­or of His Own, and Fish Is Fish all depict a jour­ney toward self-recog­ni­tion. When you think about it care­ful­ly, each of these char­ac­ters is, in one way or anoth­er, a reflec­tion of Lion­ni him­self.

    As for the sec­ond insight, I have yet to find any in-depth mate­ri­als about it. How­ev­er, from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, some who prac­tice yoga have come to regard Lionni’s works as spir­i­tu­al read­ings. Books like “Fred­er­ick” and “A Col­or of His Own” are even includ­ed on rec­om­mend­ed lists of “yoga books.” Re-read­ing “Fred­er­ick” from this new angle, the mes­sage does seem to resonate—it encour­ages read­ers to seek peace and hap­pi­ness with­in them­selves, rather than rely­ing entire­ly on the mate­r­i­al world around them.

    No mat­ter how the adult world ele­vates Leo Lion­ni, chil­dren have their own opin­ions about him. They are fas­ci­nat­ed by Leo Lion­ni’s works and deeply love the pro­tag­o­nists in those sto­ries.

    An Amer­i­can writer and edu­ca­tor named Vivian Paley wrote a book called “The Girl with the Brown Cray­on” (the Chi­nese edi­tion is titled “A Year of Read­ing Pic­ture Books Togeth­er” — 《共读绘本的一年》), in which she recounts how she, as a kinder­garten teacher, spent over a year shar­ing Leo Lionni’s works with her stu­dents. It all began with a lit­tle girl named Ree­ny, who was utter­ly cap­ti­vat­ed by “Fred­er­ick”. To her, noth­ing else mattered—not beyond Fred­er­ick and his cre­ator, Leo Lion­ni. Vivian and the entire class read all 14 Lion­ni books avail­able in the kinder­garten library, and even that wasn’t enough. So they read them again, act­ed them out, drew pic­tures, and talked—every day—about Lion­ni, about Fred­er­ick, Cor­nelius, Swim­my, Tico the bird… And just like that, a whole year passed. Look­ing back, it felt like a dream—a very sweet dream. When Leo Lion­ni passed away in 1999, Ree­ny, who was by then in fifth grade, called Vivian. She said she missed Lion­ni ter­ri­bly, and she missed those days when it felt like every­one was togeth­er with him. As she spoke, sad­ness crept into her voice. Vivian want­ed to com­fort her, and sud­den­ly remem­bered a ques­tion they had once dis­cussed in class: among all of Lionni’s char­ac­ters, which one “was” Leo Lion­ni him­self? The chil­dren had debat­ed the ques­tion for a long time. Fred­er­ick received the most votes, fol­lowed by Cor­nelius, but no one was entire­ly sure. Vivian had promised them she would ask Lion­ni in per­son one day. And lat­er, she actu­al­ly did—but by then, those chil­dren had already moved on from kinder­garten.

    Vivian brought up the mat­ter again, and Ree­ny imme­di­ate­ly became excit­ed.

    “Did he tell you?” She held her breath and dared not say anoth­er word.

    “I was vis­it­ing him in New York at the time. He walked over to a stack of his own books, picked up Swim­my, and with a brown cray­on, he drew a big cir­cle around Swim­my. Then he drew a hor­i­zon­tal line beneath it. Final­ly, on that line, he wrote a sin­gle large word: Me. That was Leo Lion­ni him­self.”

    “Nobody thought of the black fish,” Renee yelled. “But we should have, right? I mean, because we were just like those oth­er lit­tle fish, we were always around him. He could take us any­where. He made us feel like a big, big fish—stronger togeth­er.”

    She laughed with a tri­umphant smile. “Of course—he was Swim­my.”

    Record­ed by Ajia March 8, 2010, Bei­jing

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