The Only Child
Guojing
ISBN: 9780553497045
The author draws on the lonely memories of a childhood as a Chinese "only" to create a fantastical cloud-land fable of isolation and being lost.
Guojing includes a short preface that tells how as a six year old child, she got lost traveling between her parents and grandmother's houses. In reality, the forlorn author trekked through the cold until she found familiar landmarks, making her way safely back to her family on her own. In her imaginative wordless picture book (almost a graphic novel in the format of the panels and narrative pacing) a much-younger-seeming child has the same initial experience, but instead of a boring trudge down empty roads, this child wanders into the forest and is aided by a beautiful elk, then introduced to a magical land in the clouds where otters float on clouds, and the insides of blue whales are inky universes filled with stars and wonders.
Interstices show the worried parents setting off in search (cued by a delightfully pithy letter "Gone to visit Grandma" left behind) and worriedly fretting as the bus travels along, before jumping back to the fantasy world up in the clouds. Adventure time over, while the tired roly-poly child sleeps, the magical elk journeys back to the real world to find her home, and when she awakes, leads her straight into the arms of her family.
Beautiful and haunting and sweet, and oh-so perfectly captures that universal poignant feeling of isolation and loneliness.
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