Author and Illustrator: Guojing
Publisher and Year: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2015
Number of pages: 105
Genre: Fantasy
This story is about a young only child who, after their parents leave for work for the day, decides to go on an adventure to visit Grandma. But after falling asleep on the bus, they wake up in a place unfamiliar to them and have to find their way home. They encounter a stag who flies them up into the clouds, across the sky, and eventually back home safely to their parents.
Though there are no words in this story, the picture narrative provides the emotional context for the narrative. Most illustrations are framed within panels, offering a limited window into the child’s world and perspective; however, for truly big moments, the author chose instead to draw two-page spreads that fill the entire page. There aren’t any ideological structures embedded in this book that I could see, other than the author’s note where she discussed the feelings of loneliness she had as a child as a result of China’s one-child policy in the 1980s, which birthed the premise of this book. The illustrations were rendered in pencil, and the lack of color in this book is not conveyed as dreary, but rather as comforting in its familiarity.
