Chinese / Taiwan
Ai du ce de shao nian
(Son of Formosa: The boy who loves reading books)
You, Peiyun
(Yu, Pei-yun)
(text)
Zhou, Xianxin
(Chou, Chien-hsin)
(illus.)
Taibei: Man gong wen hua shi ye you xian gong si (slowork), 2020. – 161 p.
(Series: Lai zi Qing shui de hai zi; 1. Xin lang chao; 01)
ISBN 978-986-98573-0-7
Text Chinese, Japanese, and Hokkien (Taiwan Minnan)
Taiwan | History 1930-1950 | Tsai Kun-lin (b. 1930) | Biography | Graphic novel
Reading age: 12+
White Ravens issue: 2021
This biography of publisher Tsai Kun-lin simultaneously tells Taiwan’s history from Japanese colonization to modern-day democracy. Tsai’s childhood in the 1930s under Japanese rule, his experiences in World War II as a boy recruit, and the arrival of the Kuomintang are narrated from a child’s guileless perspective in carefully composed dialogues by You Peiyun, professor at National Taitung University’s Graduate Institute of Children’s Literature. The unpretentious pencil drawings by up-and-coming illustrator Zhou Xianxin bring the atmosphere of those years to life. This volume ends with the year 1950, when Tsai finds himself sentenced to ten years in jail for attending a high school book club. The next three volumes of the series – illustrated in different techniques, styles, and colours – deal with Tsai’s internment as a political prisoner, the era of his famous children’s comic magazine “Prince”, and his activities in support of human rights. The book won the Children’s and Youth Literature Award at the 2021 Taipei Book Fair. [LO]