Gao Hongbo is a writer of
children’s literature who is very sensitive to ideas and artistic feelings. As
a theorist, he contributed to the rediscovery of children with articles such as
“Discovering Children.” In art, he promoted animal fiction writing, advocated
merry and humorous literature, and thereby helped the growth of artistic self-consciousness
in children’s literature.
As a writer of children’s poems,
however, Gao Hongbo is particularly good at looking at the child’s world
through a child’s perspective. He once said, “Stealing melons is a very healthy
game for naughty children. It calls for some military skills, such as surveillance,
crawling forward, resolutely engaging with the enemy. And once you are spotted
by the guard, you need to seek shelter or fall back quickly. This is indeed an art...”1
I interpret this view as the starting point of the child-oriented standpoint exhibited
in Gao’s works for children. To view stealing melons as an “art” is his
password into the children’s world, identifying him as the children’s friend.
It is his evaluation of childhood that gave birth to his well-known “I like
you, Mr. Fox,” which reads as follows:
As the writing of original
picture books is mushrooming, it is of great importance for China, a latecomer
to the form and thus less experienced with picture books, to learn from other
countries that have rich and successful experience in this genre. In this
regard, it is worth mentioning that China Children’s Press Publication
Group has launched the creation of picture books with international
cooperation. In 2013, this organization published A Feather, an excellent work of collaboration between the famous
Chinese author Cao Wenxuan and the Winner of H.C. Anderson Award, well-known
Brazilian illustrator Roger Mello. This picture book tells a story about a
feather that tries to find the answer to the question “Where am I from?” The
feather has high hopes for flying in the sky; however, when landing on the
ground after adventures in the sky, “she” comes to a new understanding:
“Actually, walking on the earth is as good as flying in the sky.” The end of
the story suggests that the protagonist is a feather on a hen’s wings. Mello designs
very creative pictures for this philosophical story. He folds up the extended
part of the back cover to make a figure of a feature to put in the hole in the
fourteen right-hand pages. This fixed feather interacts with the ever-changing
pictures, which makes a very innovative form of artistic representation as well
as bringing home to readers the beauty of fine arts design.