The lost child meets the unexpected
Start a beautiful ensemble of literature, Chinese characters, and pictures
Experience the surprises of adventure and the warmth and beauty of home
"Don't say I'm whimsical, I want to be a lost child", does this poem remind you of your childhood self who longed to be unrestrained and wanted to run around?
The picture book "Lost Child" tells such a childlike and philosophical story, exploring the ambivalence of children's growing up who desire independence, adventure, and at the same time need a sense of security.
The creation of "The Lost Child" was inspired by the childhood fantasies of Mr. Jin Bo, and the first verse of the opening poem impressed the famous painter and winner of the Golden Apple Award of the Bratislava International Illustration Biennale (BIB), and made her decide to create for it. After four years of conception and repeated deliberation, this picture book with high artistic value and readability was finally presented.
The famous children's literature writer Jin Bo uses poetic and catchy children's poems to describe a whimsical little girl who decides to be a lost child and go on adventure freely. So she went to the novel world alone to explore and challenge, and got the love of many people along the way... After the adventure, the little girl began to miss home and realized that she was a happy and lucky child.
The "lost" of the little girl in the story is actually not a lost in the real sense, but a spiritual exploration. As a mother of three children, Ms. Yu Rong can especially understand the children's psychology of wanting freedom and love in the process of growing up. She believes that everyone in the journey of growing up wants to have a whimsical, unbridled experience of getting lost. This stems from the desire for freedom, curiosity and yearning for the unknown world, and both adults and children need a space to liberate themselves.
Teacher Yu Rong uses her whimsical ideas to expand the connotation and boundaries of this poem, using bright yellow color that represents warmth and vitality, and modern image language combining paper-cutting and pencil drawings, to depict a fantasy world full of surprises and fun for children.
In "Lost Child", Teacher Yu Rong designed a visual game that blended Chinese characters and pictures, so that the words in the book had a unique personality and life, and a vivid play was carried out, expressing both literal meaning and image meaning.
Of all the Chinese character games in this book, the most striking thing is this "辶" that runs through the story. At the beginning of the story, the cover "Lost Child" font is scattered, and the "Scooter" on the side becomes the little girl's scooter, accompanying her on a "lost adventure".
In addition, Teacher Yu Rong also cleverly designed a "book in the book", and made blank space in the language, using pure 7-color paper cuts to form a picture, which pushed the fantasy world of the reader and the little girl in the story to the "climax". Here, the little girl learns to roar with the lion, to explore treasures with the crocodile, to sit on the dinosaur slide...
The form of "mother book - sub book - mother book" also shows "reality - fantasy - reality", in order to emphasize this, the mother book and the child book are selected from different textures of art paper, the paper in the sub-book part is light, bright, slightly transparent, and the positive and negative patterns will be superimposed on each other when flipped, creating a sense of dreaminess.
There are also many brain-opening and creative text and picture designs in the book, hidden like Easter eggs in this bright and fantastic picture world, waiting for readers to discover.
The Lost Kid
Jin Bo/Wen
(English) Yu Rong/Photo
People's Literature Publishing House
Daily Press
Text/Guangzhou Daily, New Flower City Reporter: Wu Bo
Photo/ Guangzhou Daily, Xinhuacheng reporter: Wu Bo
Video/Guangzhou Daily Xinhuacheng Reporter: Wu Bo
Correspondent: Li Xiaoyang
Guangzhou Daily New Flower City Editor: Li Yani