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Zhao Lihong's new work "Tree Child" was published by Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House. This children's literature novel began in early 2020, when the new crown epidemic was just emerging, when the whole world was restless, Zhao Lihong buried her head in writing, which lasted for one year and two months, and produced this novel about a living tree root sculpture that has gone through various tribulations in nature and the world, and is revived from the dead, showing the writer's deep attachment to the world, deep compassion for mankind, and firm belief in the endless life of all things on the earth.
Kong Mingzhu |
This is Zhao Lihong's fourth children's novel. Why did I start writing children's literature at a young age? Zhao Lihong did not answer positively, and he said with a slightly mysterious smile:
This happened naturally, the perspective of my books is all teenagers, and when I started to write, it was as if I had returned to my adolescence, and the protagonist's vision, way of thinking, and dialogue language had become eleven or twelve-year-old teenagers. It was very strange, and I didn't understand it a little, but I enjoyed the crossing, it was so enjoyable, and I didn't feel tired at all when I wrote four children's books.
In the novel, the tree child is a living work of art, he can't speak but has a mind, and can use a unique belly language to talk to plants and animals in nature. The predecessor of the tree child is a century-old boxwood tree, the forest where it is located all year round is green, the wind and the sun are beautiful, the yellow oriole is singing, the squirrel, the sika deer, the big green snake are playing, the boxwood tree and the big pine tree chat, talk about the heart, live very comfortably, and the living atmosphere is peaceful.
Zhao Lihong vividly counts the beauty of the peace of heaven and earth with simple and clear words and poetic language. Suddenly, the forest is hit by a wildfire, and the beauty is destroyed in an instant. The writer's penmanship turns, facing the tragic situation of the disaster, the fire boiling, the trees are burned, the animal life is taken away, the surviving creatures flee everywhere, and the reader is like a movie, he is brought into the two heavens of ice and fire in nature. Fortunately, a heavy rain watered the remains of the boxwood tree, and the elf of the long tree was fortunate to fall into the hands of the sculptor. At this time, it seems that there is a slow and joyful music playing, and with the chant of "endless life, endless life", the grass is drilled out of the dirt, and the earth in the fire begins to recover.
The boxwood spirit that came to the human world was carefully carved by the sculptor into a fine piece, named "Tree Child". The tree child is a curious baby, he wants to know everything he sees, he feels his own transformation, and he has to ask a why every step. The process of artistic carving, the beauty of the sculptor's exquisite craftsmanship makes the tree child eye-opening, and the love of the father and son of the human sculptor is also the goal of the tree child's exploration, and the rebirth of the tree child is not only a physical change, but also a step by step growth and maturity of the mind. As the sculptor fell seriously ill, the tree child saw a lot of things, learned that the world is not always so pure and beautiful, "the people of the world, there are so many different", and adults will make last choices in the face of the embarrassing reality of money, sickness and so on. Zhao Lihong portrays the characters in a gentle and meticulous manner, penetrating human nature, and when he describes a wood carving businessman, he uses "a shrewd character at first glance, but also a kind person".
The child's fate twists and turns, and when he feels helpless in the darkness, a firefly warns him: "If you think of those lights, the darkness will hide." "When he was in the display case day after day, lonely, a beautiful girl brought care, and he learned to observe the eyes of strangers, to discern which kind of person's gaze had a temperature. These human philosophies that may not be learned in school, Zhao Lihong runs silently through stories to tell young readers.
The tree child is a sensitive boy, knows how to love, but also gets love, after coming to the white-haired grandmother's house, he uses wisdom to get along with the dog golden fluff that does not want to see him, learn to control emotions, lift its jealousy, and persuade it to be good. When a miracle occurred, when the great tribulation was imminent, the golden fluff not only helped the tree child, but also sacrificed himself in the flood. For the transformation of good and evil in the world, the inheritance of cause and effect, Zhao Lihong did not teach as a mentor at all, but said indifferently, "Many things in the world are coincidental, and when they are encountered, everything will change in the future." When the child talks to the old locust tree and watches the green insects struggle to climb, Zhao Lihong borrows the child's thinking to explain the so-called chance, success, failure and freedom with seemingly simple and substantive philosophical words.
Zhao Lihong is a well-known poet, a remarkable prose writer, in the children's literature for several years, he deeply realized that children's literature is not "small", not shallow, it can carry things are actually very grand, literature and art, astronomical geography, historical philosophy of those most essential truths and qualities, fun, to be sown into the hearts of children, the sooner the better. His children's literature writing is heavy, and he has accumulated decades of life, and he loves children in a way that writes.
The tree child finally escaped from the flood and met an old friend with a hoarse voice, a beautiful and optimistic yellow oriole bird... Parting again and again, changing new things again and again, the reeds on the lake beach withered again and again, reborn again and again, ordinary reed flowers will actually have gold, silver and red changes in one day, and the chorus of reeds "endless, endless, endless" has always lingered in the ears. "You should be a tree", this is the right of life, it is a gene that is born without change. "The tree child felt that he had a sense of fullness that he had never felt before, a magical force that was flowing from under the ground, slowly flowing into his body, filling his whole body and mind..."
Life, earth, all creatures, you are so strong but so fragile, you are so beautiful but you have gone through vicissitudes. At this moment, "Beautiful, please stay for me", Goethe's famous line in Faust jumped onto my computer screen like a pop-up window, his eyes were hot, and tears flowed down his cheeks.
"Tree Child"
Zhao Lihong / Author
Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House
Manuscript Editor: Zhang Yingying New Media Editor: Zheng Zhouming
Pictured: Publisher
1981· 40th Anniversary of the Literary Journal , 2021
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