Cao Wenxuan: Bringer of aestheticism to children
- By staff reporter Jiao Feng
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Going Global
Cao was also presented at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair with the newly published Serbian translation of The Straw House. This cooperative project dates back to the Belgrade Book Fair of 2014, which China hosted. A Serbian publisher expressed great interest in the book after Cao mentioned it at the event. The cooperation program ran smoothly and the translation was completed in just a year and a half. So far, Cao’s works have been translated into more than 40 languages and published around the world.
What’s more, Cao is the Chinese writer of children’s fiction that has most frequently cooperated with overseas illustrators. The combination of Chinese stories with international modes of visual expression has charmed young readers throughout the world.
When working with overseas illustrators, publishing houses usually provide them with sketches. After studying them and the basic story lines, illustrators then get to work. Their illustrations can sometimes add greater luster to a book. For example, Cao’s Where Have Xiaoye and His Father Gone tells the story of a motherless boy and his father whom poverty forces to borrow wheat from others. In one illustration, Italian illustrator Eva Montanari pictured the moon as the face of the boy’s mother, although this had not been stipulated. Cao praised this significant touch on Montanari’s part as inspired by imagination and insight.
Zhang Yuntao, deputy editor-in-chief of Daylight Publishing House, believes that cooperation with overseas illustrators can show domestic publishers how their international counterparts complie picture books. “We have realized that illustrations are not simply embellishments but important complements to the story,” Zhang said. Moreover, Chinese publishers often doubt the appeal of local stories for global readers. But through her collaborations with international publishing houses, Zhang has established that overseas publishers are indeed willing to portray the lives of children in other countries to their readers. “Stories with Chinese characteristics are the most valued,” she concluded.
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