The Only Child

by Guojing, Guojing (Illustrator)

Overview

A New York Times Best Illustrated Book • A Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade Book of the Century

Hailed by Entertainment Weekly and the Wall Street Journal as a best book of the year, this gorgeous and imaginative story—part picture book, part graphic novel—is utterly transporting and original. USA Today declared it “a compelling and melancholy debut from an important new talent" as well as "an expansive and ageless book full of wonder, sadness, and wild bursts of imagination.” And like Shaun Tan's The Arrival and Raymond Briggs's The Snowman, it is quickly becoming a modern classic.

A little girl—lost and alone—follows a mysterious stag deep into the woods, and, like Alice down the rabbit hole, she finds herself in a strange and wondrous world. But... home and family are very far away. How will she get back there?

In this magnificently illustrated—and wordless—masterpiece, debut artist Guojing brilliantly captures the rich and deeply-felt emotional life of a child, filled with loneliness and longing as well as love and joy.

“A haunting, wordless, gorgeously drawn picture book.” —People

“Told wordlessly through soft, dreamy illustrations, Guojing’s tale evokes the loneliness of growing up under China’s one-child policy.” —Entertainment Weekly

“A dreamy, wordless debut.” —The New York Times

"Majestic.... Rare is the book containing great emotional depth that truly resonates across a span of ages: this is one such." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred

"Reminiscent of Raymond Briggs’s classic, The Snowman (1978), this is quiet, moving, playful, and bittersweet all at once." —Booklist, Starred

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553497069
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	12/01/2015
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	42 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	5 - 9 Years

About the Author

Guojing is an illustrator from the Shanxi Province of China. Since graduating from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, she has worked as a concept artist for games and animated television shows. Due to China's birth control policy, Guojing is an only child, and she has drawn on her childhood memories of loneliness and isolation while developing this, her first book.

Editorial Reviews

…dreamy…The lonely child is led to bravery through her imagination, a path sometimes obstructed in our own culture by parental perimeters or stifling ideas of safety. This book asks what happens when a child is left alone to encounter the world with all its dangers, all its wonders.

The New York Times Book Review - Samantha Hunt

★ 09/28/2015
In an author’s note, newcomer Guojing explains that this wordless graphic novel grew out of memories of “isolation and loneliness,” growing up under China’s one-child policy. The Only Child of her story is an adorable dumpling in overalls who discovers herself alone on a bus after falling asleep. She sets off to find her grandmother’s house and is approached in a wintry forest by a stag, who flies with her into a realm beyond the clouds. There they discover an irresistible creature—part baby seal, part polar bear cub—and the three share a marvelous adventure until the animal’s parent comes to fetch it and the child is left alone again. She is never deserted by the loyal stag, though, who returns her safely to her own world. The low-key, all-gray charcoal palette carries whiffs of winter chill and poverty, but the physical sensations Guojing suggests visually—the fluffy softness of the clouds, the warmth of the stag’s closeness—provide the comfort of a soft quilt. Fine draftsmanship, deft pacing, and striking imaginative power distinguish this debut. Ages 5–9. Agent: Isabel Atherton, Creative Authors. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"A gorgeous, quiet book, deserving of multiple reads." —Gene Yang, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, author of American Born Chinese, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award

"A beautifully drawn adventure that slips effortlessly between dream and memory, as if these two worlds are actually one and the same: that distant place where the heart and mind must always travel before returning home, to know what it means to be lonely before knowing what it means to be loved." —Shaun Tan, creator of The Arrival and The Lost Thing

"The Only Child evocatively, and without a single word, reminds us that we all are hopelessly lost and then joyously found, again and again, throughout our lives." —Marla Frazee, two-time Caldecott Honor winner for All the World and A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever

"Guojing's luminous pencil drawings create a world of such sensory presence that now I know what it feels like to run my hand across the snout of a great stag, swing by an antler onto its back and soar through the air; or to watch in awe as a giant sky-whale dives down into a sea of clouds. A wonderfully dizzying journey." —Paul O. Zelinsky, Caldecott Medalist for Rapunzel, and three-time Caldecott Honor recipient for Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Swamp Angel

“Rare is the book containing great emotional depth that truly resonates across a span of ages: this is one such.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred

“Fine draftsmanship, deft pacing, and striking imaginative power distinguish this debut.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred

“Each arresting, softly penciled panel is surprisingly luminous in spite of its monochromatic palette, and in those gentle scenes, Guojing evokes a wide range of feeling, especially the lonesomeness of the little girl, who never quite seems at ease alone. Reminiscent of Raymond Briggs’ classic, The Snowman (1978), this is quiet, moving, playful, and bittersweet all at once.” —Booklist, Starred 

"In Guojing's beautiful, wordless storybook, a little Chinese girl left home alone wanders off into the snow and has magical cloud adventures with a benevolent stag." —Shelf Awareness, Starred

From the Publisher

★ 2015-08-26
Left alone when her mother leaves for work, a child amuses herself with television, dolls, and a toy deer before boarding a bus for her grandmother's house. The ensuing experience, in which she falls asleep, misses her stop, and runs scared into the woods, is pulled directly from the author's childhood in China. In this wordless, 112-page graphic novel, her constantly-in-motion protagonist is rescued by a mysterious stag that leads her up a ladder of clouds into a puffy paradise. The animal is a perfect playmate. Humorous close-ups reveal a hands-on exploration of the animal's muzzle, toothy smiles, and affectionate nuzzling before the afternoon's excitement. Guojing's telling is skillfully paced. Early on, a sequence of 12 nearly square panels on a page conveys the child's sense of confinement, loneliness, and boredom. Varying in size and shape, digitally manipulated graphite compositions create a soft, quiet atmosphere within which a gamut of effects are achieved: brilliant, snowy light, the etched faces of shivering street vendors, nuanced cloudscapes, and the pure black of a whale's interior after the duo and a new friend are swallowed, Jonah-style. Majestic settings, tender interactions, and pure silliness lead readers to pore closely over these images, pulled along by shifting perspectives, ethereal beauty, and delight in the joy born of friendship. Rare is the book containing great emotional depth that truly resonates across a span of ages: this is one such. (author's note) (Picture book. 5 & up)

Kirkus Reviews