Vendor
china@hercules Z.H. Chen
Original language
Chinese
Categories
Children’s, Teenage & Educational

Summer

Rong Yu Wenxuan Cao

In the hot summer sun a group of animals are eagerly looking for a shady place to rest. The animals quarrel for a spot under a tree, until finally, the elephant wins. But when they look again, the tree is dying and has only a few leaves left. Just then, they see a father and son crossing the wasteland. The father's shadow is like a canopy over the little boy...and the animals are intrigued... Cao Wenxuan is the Winner of Hans Christian Andersen Award 2016.

Author: Cao Wenxuan

Hans Christian Andersen Award （2016）, Peking University professor, and member of the Chinese Writers Association’s national committee Cao Wenxuan is one of China’s most influential authors of children’s books. He has written over fifty books, and won over forty awards. His works have been translated into many languages, including English, German, French, Russian, Swedish, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. In recent years he has been working on picture books for Chinese children, and has written Feather, Silly Chicken, Chrysanthemum Doll, Big Fish Travels to the Sea, The Last Leopard, and Streetlamp No. 8. His words are at once beautifully poetic and deeply philosophical, and he is a far reaching figure in the field of original Chinese picture books. The international rights for his books have been sold to countries such as France, Japan, Sweden, Korea, Brazil, and the books have twice won the Outstanding Book Award from the China General Administration of Press and Publication. In 2013, six of his books, including Chrysanthemum Doll, were recipients of the Chinese Government Award for Publishing. Feather was voted “Children’s Book of the Year”, whilst Call of the Sky was one of the “50 Books Most Loved by the Public”.

Illustrator: Yu Rong

A British Chinese artist and graduate of the Royal College of Art, her picture books have been published all over the world: in the UK, the US, Italy, Holland, Japan and Korea. She has recently begun working with Chinese publishers. Her illustrations for The Cloud-like Myna won a Golden Apple award at the 24^th Biennial of Illustration Bratislava, and the work won a golden windmill for best children’s book at the 2013 Shanghai International Book Fair, and has also been entered into consideration for “China’s most beautiful book 2013”. Yu Rong currently lives in rural Cambridgeshire with her husband, Donkey, her three children, Caterpillar, Chili Pepper and Bean, and their German spaniel, Detective Sniffy.

Available products
Book Published by 21st Century Publishing House , ISBN: 9787556811588 Main content page count: 48 Pages ISBN: 9787556811588

Available products

Book

Published by 21st Century Publishing House , ISBN: 9787556811588

Main content page count: 48 Pages

ISBN: 9787556811588

Comments

Globalisation should mean children across the world have access to book treasures in every language. Sadly this is not the case. There are gate keepers who make choices about which books to translate and of course economic barriers which mean only a tiny fraction of all books published across the world reach us here in Australia. If Cao Wenxuan had not won the Hans Christian Andersen medal in 2016, I am sure his book Summer would not have arrived in a local school library that I visited yesterday.

The cover of Summer is complex and perhaps makes more sense after reading this book. Begin with the end papers. The opening spread shows morning in a dry landscape with distant mountains and sparse straggly trees. On the final spread the heat of the day has passed and it is the cool evening.

The story opens with a description of a cool environment near a river where animals and humans rest in the shade. This contrasts with the next scene.

"In the meantime, on the parched grassland a group of animals desperately searches for shade." The animals see a tree in the distance and race off to claim the shade. But "the tree is barely alive." The elephant claims the shade but when he chases off his rivals everyone realises there is no shade. There is laughter but it is not directed at elephant - just the collective realisation that the shade they sought was not even there. Then a boy and his father walk across the grassland. "The father's shadow completely covers the little boy. Calmly they walk under the blazing sun."

There is a lesson and a solution here for the animals and using graduated pages each animal makes shade and then invites another to rest. Lynx, jackal, leopard, brown bear, rhino, elephant, field mouse and beetle - everyone wins! And there is one more surprise. This is a book that should be in every school library.
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