With the help, of a young child, in creating the stories, with the inputs from her young daughter, translated…
I’d written several children’s fairytales for a certain children’s reader magazine, my inspiration for the stories came from my daughter, Yu, in the third-grade.
About six months ago, I saw Yu clenching some colorful pieces of clay, as she’d talked to the sculptures, like they were, alive, I was inspired, and, wrote out a fairytale called, “The Wish of the Small Black Clay”, about how an ordinary piece of black clay that was often ignored how it’d not given up on its dreams, and worked hard, in making itself softened and flexible, and it finally, found its own stage, on a clay molding contest someday, was molded into, an elegant and graceful black cat in competition, and, that it’d learned, from this experience, the importance of working from day to day, and, getting help from one’s own friends too, to work together with it.
I originally thought, that fairytale writing for me, was nothing more than just a whim, but, this story I’d written not only gotten printed out, the editor of the periodical wrote me a personal letter, said, that the story was very interesting, hoped, that I can, submit more of my stories. And so, I’d started, paying more attention, to the goings-on around me, especially childish words of my daughter, Yu, there are, a ton of materials I can draw from watching her; and I’d suddenly realized, that using a child’s eyes to look at the world, the world became, more passionate, cuter, more colorful, and more magical too.
Yu loved beading, and invited the saying, of how the bracelets, necklaces she’d made, had powers to make the wearer happy, healthy, and get rich, and for that, I’d, written out a story, “The Girl who Made the Crystal Beads into Jewelry”. Yu would often, hug onto the cat, and went into her closets to sit with it on her lap, and, talked endlessly, for hours on end with it, and I’d written, “The Magical Closet of the Cat” for it. And, as we went strolling at the park on the weekends, Yu only stepped on the red bricks on the pavements, and not the gray ones, and told me that I’d needed to, follow this rule of hers, that if I’d stepped on a gray brick, I’d fallen, straight, into another unknown dimension, and based off of this imagination of hers, I’d written “A Passageway into the Unknown Dimension”; a few days at supper, Yu told her dad to crush the shells of peanuts for her and he wouldn’t, she’d poked his arms, said, “here’s a button, I press it, and you shell the peanuts for me!”—and this, was how I came to writing my most recent, “Daddy Robot” story.
As I’d finished my drafts of each and every one of my stories, I’d read it to Yu, and, if she’d felt that the wordings, or storyline was off, I’d, immediately changed it, to how she’d liked it, until my young reader feels satisfied. The children’s minds are often, more sensitive than the adults’, like for instance, I’d written in a story, that Bunny’s jump rope got severed, as she played by the roads, my daughter asked me matter-of-factly, “How do you jump rope by the side of the roads? Wouldn’t you get run over by a car?” I’d immediately, switched “by the side of the roads” to “inside the parks”, then, she’d nodded at me, satisfactorily.
more stories here, photo from online…
The most well-known children’s author, Liang Lin once stated, “a children’s writer needs to talk to children often, that way, the stories s/he writes will be age-appropriate and natural, and not felt artificial”. Yu is NOT just my source of inspiration for my children’s tales, but also, a more-than-fitting critic too!
So, this, is the adult, learning, to see things, from a child’s view point, because, the children’s thought processes are simpler, and straight to the point, and so, if they tell you, that this isn’t quite right, then, you, STUPID adults should, CHANGE, but, how many times, did you, parents or teachers, ASK your children or students, what THEY thought of something? Not enough times is my guess!!!