Bookworm Literary Festival: Hong Ying and Cherry Denman
Last Monday morning found us at the Bookworm for our first event of the Literary Festival, a joint presentation by author Hong Ying and illustrator Cherry Denman on their children's book collaboration The Girl from the French Fort.
I was especially curious what kind of children's book Hong Ying would write. Her fiction and her memoir are very much not for children. Not that I thought she would write something inappropriate, but I wondered how different her story for a younger audience might be.
The biggest difference, we were to find that morning, was magic, and Cherry Denman's illustrations would go along with this.
More after the jump
The Girl from the French Fort does bear some similarities to Hong Ying's other writing. It is set in a time and place very familiar to her, 1970s Chongqing, near the old French naval fort that looked like a castle to her growing up. And there is a cross-cultural love story between a Westerner and a young local woman. However, that is where the similarities end. There is magic, ghostly time travel, tragedy, and redemption as the main character Sangsang slips between his own time and years before when the French navy operated a port in Chongqing.
One of the obvious questions for us was how these two women came to work together. Cherry Denman, the wife of a British diplomat, has lived all over the world, including a few stops in Hong Kong and Beijing. She and Hong Ying are old friends, and so when Hong Ying sought to publish this book, she wanted Denman to illustrate. At this, Denman cracked that a Chinese illustrator would have been faster and cheaper, to which Hong Ying gave a clearly amused nod.
They are currently working on another book together, and Myles has enjoyed repeating this anecdote from the talk. In one illustration, Denman drew a picture of a boy scrambling eggs. She had drawn him with a whisk and a large bowl. However, as Hong Ying pointed out, this was not the way it is done in China. Denman had to change part of the picture to reflect the proper Chinese way of scrambling eggs, with chopsticks and a smaller bowl. I'd love to see the original picture of that, by the way.
Hong Ying also mentioned that The Girl from the French Fort is currently being adapted into a puppet play that will be shown at the Milan Expo. This would be something to see, certainly.
Later one of the event attendees, a journalist with CRI conducted this interview, getting answers to questions I wanted to ask, too, except we ran out of time.
After the talk Denman invited us to have coffee with her, Hong Ying, and an assortment of their acquaintances who had also attended the event. Cherry Denman is outgoing, hysterical, and friendly to the to point of chummy. At one point the woman sitting next to me asked me how long I had known Denman, to which I had to reply that I had only just met her.
During that time Denman told me about her own humorous memoir, Diplomatic Incidents: The Memoirs of an (Un)Diplomatic Wife. She promised me that I would "laugh my pants off" or she would give me my money back. I bought it later that day and finished it in stolen spurts throughout the week. I will not be seeking a refund, that is for sure. I laughed so hard and several times had to stop Randy from doing what he was doing to hear me read passages aloud.
I will touch on this later when I get my post up on Will Buckingham, but there is something to be said about how seeing an author in person can change pre-conceptions about a book. At the Bookworm, I found Denman so personable and self-deprecating, that I was sure her book had to read the same way. I had only glanced it over earlier and elected not to buy it because it didn't seem to hold any appeal for me. Thankfully, I was wrong.
I was especially curious what kind of children's book Hong Ying would write. Her fiction and her memoir are very much not for children. Not that I thought she would write something inappropriate, but I wondered how different her story for a younger audience might be.
The biggest difference, we were to find that morning, was magic, and Cherry Denman's illustrations would go along with this.
More after the jump
The Girl from the French Fort does bear some similarities to Hong Ying's other writing. It is set in a time and place very familiar to her, 1970s Chongqing, near the old French naval fort that looked like a castle to her growing up. And there is a cross-cultural love story between a Westerner and a young local woman. However, that is where the similarities end. There is magic, ghostly time travel, tragedy, and redemption as the main character Sangsang slips between his own time and years before when the French navy operated a port in Chongqing.
One of the obvious questions for us was how these two women came to work together. Cherry Denman, the wife of a British diplomat, has lived all over the world, including a few stops in Hong Kong and Beijing. She and Hong Ying are old friends, and so when Hong Ying sought to publish this book, she wanted Denman to illustrate. At this, Denman cracked that a Chinese illustrator would have been faster and cheaper, to which Hong Ying gave a clearly amused nod.
They are currently working on another book together, and Myles has enjoyed repeating this anecdote from the talk. In one illustration, Denman drew a picture of a boy scrambling eggs. She had drawn him with a whisk and a large bowl. However, as Hong Ying pointed out, this was not the way it is done in China. Denman had to change part of the picture to reflect the proper Chinese way of scrambling eggs, with chopsticks and a smaller bowl. I'd love to see the original picture of that, by the way.
Hong Ying also mentioned that The Girl from the French Fort is currently being adapted into a puppet play that will be shown at the Milan Expo. This would be something to see, certainly.
Later one of the event attendees, a journalist with CRI conducted this interview, getting answers to questions I wanted to ask, too, except we ran out of time.
After the talk Denman invited us to have coffee with her, Hong Ying, and an assortment of their acquaintances who had also attended the event. Cherry Denman is outgoing, hysterical, and friendly to the to point of chummy. At one point the woman sitting next to me asked me how long I had known Denman, to which I had to reply that I had only just met her.
During that time Denman told me about her own humorous memoir, Diplomatic Incidents: The Memoirs of an (Un)Diplomatic Wife. She promised me that I would "laugh my pants off" or she would give me my money back. I bought it later that day and finished it in stolen spurts throughout the week. I will not be seeking a refund, that is for sure. I laughed so hard and several times had to stop Randy from doing what he was doing to hear me read passages aloud.
I will touch on this later when I get my post up on Will Buckingham, but there is something to be said about how seeing an author in person can change pre-conceptions about a book. At the Bookworm, I found Denman so personable and self-deprecating, that I was sure her book had to read the same way. I had only glanced it over earlier and elected not to buy it because it didn't seem to hold any appeal for me. Thankfully, I was wrong.
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