O – The Only Child

The Only Child written and illustrated by Guojing (2015)

The wordless picture book tells the story of a little girl who go off by herself to visit her grandmother. She gets lost along the way and is rescued by a full grown stag who takes her on magnificent adventures. She meets another small animal who is lost. When that animal is reunited with its mother, the girl knows she wants to be home. After she falls asleep the stag flies through the night sky to find them and brings the girl back home. That night she goes to sleep in her own bed clutching a toy stage. The illustrations are gorgeous! Children and adults alike will sit and pour over these illustrations for hours.

In the preface, Guojing talks about the time when she was left alone at six years old and got on a bus to visit her grandmother all by herself. She fell asleep on the bus and missed her stop. When she finally woke up, she got off the bus and cried. She wandered the streets until she noticed the bus lines and followed them back to her grandmother’s stop where her family was waiting for her. Although this story is more fanciful than the actual event, she based it on her own experience of being an only child in the one-child policy China who was often alone and lonely.

Have some one-on-one fun with your kiddo and these craft activities from China.

Get directions for easy origami.