I Like To Be Little
︎A three-act poetic play started from sound.
This book takes the form of a dialogue between a mother and her child — gentle, non-judgmental questions, and sincere, content answers about why I like to be little.
The text was written by Charlotte Zolotow in 1966. It was first published as a picturebook in 1987 and later went out of print. In 2023, EverAfter Books acquired the Chinese-language rights, and I was fortunate to be invited to take part by creating a new visual interpretation.
Nearly seventy years separate the writing of the text and the creation of these illustrations. How to preserve the classical quality of Zolotow’s words while offering a contemporary interpretation was the greatest challenge of this project for me. To me, this book is more than a conversation between a mother and her child. In Zolotow’s writing, I also sense a dialogue between one’s adult self and one’s childish self. So, I decided to introduce a big hand into the storytelling — it can belong to the mother, but it can also be the “me” of adulthood. As the pages turn, childhood memories unfold like light afternoon dreams; paper airplanes are thrown toward the future, and also toward the past that one misses. I hope to offer this classic text a layered interpretation.
Published Edition: Simplified Chinese
Other rights available
This book takes the form of a dialogue between a mother and her child — gentle, non-judgmental questions, and sincere, content answers about why I like to be little.
The text was written by Charlotte Zolotow in 1966. It was first published as a picturebook in 1987 and later went out of print. In 2023, EverAfter Books acquired the Chinese-language rights, and I was fortunate to be invited to take part by creating a new visual interpretation.
Nearly seventy years separate the writing of the text and the creation of these illustrations. How to preserve the classical quality of Zolotow’s words while offering a contemporary interpretation was the greatest challenge of this project for me. To me, this book is more than a conversation between a mother and her child. In Zolotow’s writing, I also sense a dialogue between one’s adult self and one’s childish self. So, I decided to introduce a big hand into the storytelling — it can belong to the mother, but it can also be the “me” of adulthood. As the pages turn, childhood memories unfold like light afternoon dreams; paper airplanes are thrown toward the future, and also toward the past that one misses. I hope to offer this classic text a layered interpretation.
Published Edition: Simplified Chinese
Other rights available
/ Behind the Stage /
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