Bridge of Ajia

Tags: Children’s Books

  • 《原创图画书阅读与精品》访谈（二）

    Interview on “Original Picture Books: Selected Readings and Highlights” (Part 2)

    Intro­duc­tion: This is an inter­view pod­cast con­duct­ed on “Pic­ture Book Lol­lipop”, host­ed by Xiaox­i­ang and guest Ajia. Start­ing from the ref­er­ence book “Orig­i­nal Pic­ture Books: Select­ed Read­ings and High­lights” pub­lished at the end of 2024, an in-depth con­ver­sa­tion was held around the selec­tion cri­te­ria, his­tor­i­cal con­text, cur­rent themes and future devel­op­ment of orig­i­nal pic­ture books. The record­ing time is on the evening of Jan­u­ary 3, 2025, and the broad­cast time is Jan­u­ary 17, 2025.

    The fol­low­ing text is com­piled as an excerpt. To lis­ten to the full pod­cast, please click the fol­low­ing audio link:

    Himalaya:38 Dia­logue with Teacher Ajia: Has the Spring of Orig­i­nal Pic­ture Books Arrived?Pic­ture Book Lol­lipopFree online read­ing, lis­ten­ing and down­load­ing – Himalayas

    Micro­cosm:http://t.cn/A6uDFbvy

    »> Click to open Part 1

    [Part 2]

    …

    So I had a basic idea at that time: if we were to write the first book on the com­pi­la­tion of orig­i­nal pic­ture books, we must not miss those basic books.

    This was my ini­tial start­ing point.

    Xiaox­i­ang:

    Was the process of draft­ing your list of 62 books quick? Or did you actu­al­ly think about it for a long time?

    Among these 62 books, which one or which ones do you think are the most dif­fi­cult to choose? And which ones can you decide very quick­ly and feel that “this is a must-have”? Can you give some exam­ples?

    Ajia:

    We prob­a­bly start­ed this in 2021. The time­line I record­ed start­ed in April 2021. When I was sure I was going to do it, I actu­al­ly had a list in my mind because I had been prepar­ing for it over the years.

    But I still have to con­vince every­one, I need a good rea­son. I cer­tain­ly don’t say that I have already decid­ed “these are the books”, but I have an idea why I chose these books. This idea can actu­al­ly be traced back to 2005 to 2006, when it was already in its infan­cy.

    Why do I say so?

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  • 新译作《天生大坏蛋》出炉

    New translation of “Born Bad” is out

    The third book I trans­lat­ed in 2025 was Born Bad, writ­ten by CK Smouha and illus­trat­ed by Stephen Smith. This book was first pub­lished in the UK in 2018, and I sub­mit­ted the Chi­nese trans­la­tion in July 2019. The Chi­nese ver­sion was almost pub­lished in 2023, and final­ly came out in 2025.

    This book is CK Smo­ha’s pic­ture book debut. The writ­ing style is sim­ple and plain. The “wolf” appears direct­ly as the pro­tag­o­nist, and then a series of dia­logues are car­ried out with oth­er ani­mals. It is a bit like a philo­soph­i­cal dia­logue, and also has a sense of dra­ma. The dia­logue nat­u­ral­ly includes all kinds of knowl­edge about the rel­e­vant ani­mals. It seems play­ful and humor­ous on the sur­face, but it is full of metaphors about real­i­ty behind it.

    《天生大坏蛋》封面
    “Born to be a Badass” cov­er

    狼身为狼，并不开心。
    当他照镜子的时候，看起来很坏。
    当他看起来很坏的时候，感觉很不好。
    当他感觉很不好的时候，就会做坏事。

    Wolf was­n’t hap­py being wolf.

    When he looked in the mir­ror, he looked BAD.

    And when he looked bad, he felt bad, and

    when he felt bad, he act­ed bad.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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