Light the Lantern - Neverland World's Masterpiece Picture Book 282

★ New Year is like a gift to everyone
A picture book filled with anticipation and excitement for a new beginning
Welcoming the new year with excitement. The first day of the new month has a special meaning for everyone. For Zhao Di, who has been waiting for the Lunar New Year to come for the past year, the New Year is even more special. After attending New Year's greetings on Lunar New Year's Day, Odi lights up lanterns and walks around the village with his friends from the fifth day of New Year. Then, when the first full moon of the year comes, we put our regrets aside and burn all the lanterns. This is because it is believed that if the lantern is not burned, his maternal uncle will get an eye disease. So the children's lantern play in the work is not just a simple play, but also a symbol of their earnest wish for me and my family to welcome the coming year in good health.
The sight of ending the New Year's festival by burning lanterns reflects the emptiness of the end, the excitement for a new spring, and the anticipation for the Lunar New Year to come again next year. The process of excitement turning into regret, and regret turning into waiting, and Zhao Di's joy at realizing that at the end of waiting, there is always another beginning, will give readers hope and serve as a foundation for growth in the year. ★ Joo Cheong-liang, the author selected as Illustrator of the Year at the 2016 Bologna Children's International Book Fair
Writer Wang Yage's childhood memories
Expressing the emotions of mainland China warmly with richly colored oil paintings.

Lanterns brightened my childhood as warm friends.
Now my childhood has become distant, as if it was at the end of a road or on the other side of a river,
The girl with the lantern still remains in my heart.
I look at myself through that still-living light of emotion.
-From the author's words-

Author Wang Yage considered the Lunar New Year special, to the point where he described it as 'the light that brightened my childhood.' Zhao Di in the work, who waits for the Lunar New Year holiday and is overcome with emptiness when it ends, is also a reflection of Wang Yage himself in his childhood. Zhao Di feels a sense of loss as the festival atmosphere that has been going on for a long time before the Lunar New Year reaches its peak and comes to an end, but he soon realizes that the end is not eternal goodbye, but a new goodbye for the coming spring. Artist Zhu Qingliang expresses these memories of Wang Yage through oil paintings with rich colors that capture the emotions of mainland China, and brightly and warmly unfolds the world of childhood, which serves as the foundation for strong growth. His paintings, which are reminiscent of the works of impressionist artists, are Western yet warmly blended with Chinese colors, making them new and especially familiar and approachable to Korean readers, who share the same Asian culture.