Chinese / People's Republic of China
Yi ge mi lu shi cai yu jian de guo jia he yi qun qing xing shi zuo meng de meng xiang jia
(A country one will only find by getting lost and a group of dreamers who only dream when sober)
Chen, Shige
(text)
Li, Qingyue
(illus.)
Nanchang: Er shi yi shi ji chu ban she ji tuan (21st Century Publ. Group), 2020. – 266 p.
ISBN 978-7-5568-5214-7
Country | Dream | Philosophy
Reading age: 8+
White Ravens issue: 2021
Born in the 1980s, young poet and writer Chen Shige offers his readers a feast of creativity and inspiration with this new book. Readers follow the story’s narrator on his journey to marvelous, non-existent places, such as the invisible country, the potato country, the grass country, or the windwheel country. However, for the author they are not non-existent at all, since he believes that “every fairy tale is true” and that they point toward a new way of explaining and understanding the world and one’s own self. In one of the episodes in this book, an old man believes so completely in the world he constructs in his mind that he goes out to look for it. For Chen Shige, each fairy tale is also a philosophical metaphor, because everyone is king/queen of his/her own country. Chen is the talented author of books such as “Feng ju zhu de jie dao” (The street where wind lives) and “Tong hua zhi shu” (The book of fairy tales). He is a winner of the National Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature and other children’s books prizes. [FW, ZX]