picture book study

Picture book is a combination of pictures and texts. Pictures and texts interdepend and form a balance. Publishers from Taiwan first came up with “Adults picture book”, which tells stories through emotional words, colour and forms and the sentiments and connotation of this kind of books can only interested or understand by adults.

Jimmy Liao, the most well known illustrator and picture book writer in China. In the beginning of 2002, followed by the his work imported in mainland China, there arise a reading madness of picture book among young people, and this phenomenon last till now. Jimmy’s books have been translated into dozens of languages and also been adapted for drama, movie and animation, many of characters in his picture books have been applied to the making of dolls and pictures on T-shirts, postcards, posters and other authorized products.

His work is widely popular among young people in China and the most important reason is because his work captures and gets resonance with young’s psychological needs. Jimmy’s work shows deeply loneliness. The young man and woman in “A Chance of Sunshine”, they shuttle in the city, they do the repeat things everyday, by accidentally they meet each other and have a nice afternoon together, they exchanged telephone number however both of them lost it and they missed each other. But in fact they are neighbors, between them there is only a wall. China is a new urbanization country, people are busy doing their own work, they walk though the city, walk pass other people and none of them has any relationship with others. From 12 to 26 years old, young people begin to think about life, they hope to be accepted by society, they want to have good interpersonal and need friendship and love, they are looking for emotional sustenance. However, in China, young people are busy studying and working, they have intense competition, lack of communicate with others and due to their young age, they can not understand lots of phenomenon in the world, their self-awareness have a conflict with social reality, and they are too sensitive to understand, these reasons lead to their loneliness.

According to related survey that 28.6% graduate students in college always feel lonely, 37.1% have occasional loneliness, almost none students had never felt lonely. The loneliness in Jimmy’s work happens to hold the same feeling with young adults and then it is not difficult to understand why they got resonance from Jimmy’s work. They believe Jimmy’s work can shows and identify with their thoughts: the characters in the books are the portraiture of themselves. Identify with these books in some contents is a mutual approve between others and oneself, which is good for diverting themselves from loneliness and make them feel relax and happy.

Secondly, Jimmy’s work is full of innocence and simplicity. Almost all the main roles of his books are using the images of children or animal. His books view the world with rich imaginations and use simple and unassuming texts to tell the stories.  Jimmy’s work has a very bright colour, and using simple words to tell profound truths, also provide a dream-like life.

In urban China, all the families have to follow one child policy, as the only one child at home parents always giving very high expectations to them. Young adults in China are suffering different pressures from all the directions of lives, family contradiction, peer group, sexuality, and work, which make young people living under nervous and anxious. These heavy pressures let them yearn of pure and happy childhoods, however it is impossible to escape from reality, therefore they always looking for ways to release their negative feelings. Jimmy’s work satisfies young people’s desire and imaginations and then helps relieve the psychological pressure of young people.

There are also other popular picture books like “I, Tuski, U?” “Gun Dan Ba, Zhong Liu Jun!”(Get out, Mr. Tumor!) . They have some significant characteristics like Jimmy’s work: humor, simple texts, and psychological satisfaction. However almost all of these books are based on writers’ own experience and thoughts of life, which do not been agreed with most general people, therefore the potential readers are limited. There is no similar fun book in China now, which can provide fun contents and be accepted by generals.