Picture Books-> Chinese Picture Books-> China

So let me start off by saying very quickly that Laban Carrack Hill, repped by the agency I'm at got a Caldecott honor for his work on Dave the Potter. Normally I don't place much stock in awards myself, but looking over the contenders, this was actually the only Caldecott nominee I was even remotely interested in. So congratulations are in order. Now there's only one thing to do. Write a sequel.

So, onward to Chinese picture books. This is a weird, although simple story I thought you all might get a kick out of. Several years ago I studied for a semester in China. The program finds you tutors in Chinese from amongst the students at the host university, but I've never been one to study. Never had to. Wish I knew how. I got an A and now I remember all of like, eight words in Chinese. Le sigh. Anyway, my tutor and I mostly talked history and politics and whatnot. After I left, she sent me her thesis to edit. I did. Several times in great detail. She won a scholarship to continue studing English Language and Lit at the graduate level. Not because of me, honestly. She had some of the best English I saw there and she worked very hard. Never the less, even though for the last couple of years we hadn't talked much I got an e-mail from her out of the blue on Christmas morning. Turns out that she now works at some sort of Chinese publisher. She had contacts at another one called the FLTRP which is the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press or something like that. Sometimes I think the Chinese don't quite grasp how acronyms work. Then again, maybe it sounded hella cool in Chinese. Meantime, it sounds like someone blowing a raspberry. Anyway, on her reccomendation, they wanted me to shorten and simplify Disney picture books for use as language teaching tools in classrooms etc. On the one hand, it'd be easy work and I heartily approve of the idea. It's one of the few things I really regret about my own life that I'm not proficient in any other languages. On the other hand, I know China and I'm not at all convinced that their deal with Disney is legit. I think you all can imagine what might happen if I strolled into Hyperion one day and they loved me and sent me home with smiles from the interview only to run a background check and see that there are unlicensed Disney products with my name on them. I mean, sure. I think Random House does Disney picture books, not Hyperion, but would it stop them from blacklisting me?

Also on Christmas day, His Holiness Pope Idiot the XVII made a speech about how China is evil. I didn't mention it at the time because I'd presolved to not scoff at heavy handed religous morality. But I am now free to seethe as I see fit. Rather than ramble crazy anew, here's the transcript of an e-mail I sent my brother.

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So, I saw an article today. "Pope to Catholics in China: Be Brave." Basically, the pope went out and gave a speech that boils down to "China is as bad as Iraq. They're bad, evil people." Now, I could talk for hours about how this is obnoxious, ignorant and ill-advised. I could point out that it's not even remotely like a fair comparison, that the Chinese government couldn't care less if you believe in God as long as the religion isn't undermining their authority (which it wasn't until he opened his big mouth, the dumb fuck) or how this is a desperate and hypocritical attempt by a bloated, violent, self righteous group to use the same methods of threat, cajoling and manipulation that their newly identified enemy uses, hoping to legitimize themselves at the expense of over a billion people (because China, not the CCP is the villain here) because of their paranoid but probably correct fear that they are becoming quickly obsolete as a social, cultural, even as a religious authority. What a nice group of people those catholics are. You know. The largest centrally organized religion in the world. With millenia of history converting heathens by the blade. Crying wolf to get attention. Led by a Nazi. And then avoiding any kind of responsibility because as a religious institution THEY ARE NOT EVEN REMOTELY BEHOLDEN TO THEIR FOLLOWERS WHILE SECULAR ORGANIZATIONS INCLUDING THE CCP ARE BEHOLDEN, EVEN IF ONLY MINIMALLY, TO BOTH THEIR CIVILLIANS AND THE APPROVAL OF THE "INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY." I could say all these things, but somehow I feel like you probably understand all that and understand that a self serving snowball artist just picked a fight of epic proprtions and then tagged out and left secular governments to fight it in their place as millions of blindly loyal catholics rise up and say "Yeah, fuck them Chinese and their slanty eyes!"

I mean. Merry Christmas? Try not to let the McNamara's see this on your blackberry screen. You never know. The next inquisition could be just around the corner. But to be fair, that priest did tell you that you were halfway there and that he could save you. So if you get put on the rack, you have no one but yourself to blame for not brainlessly capitulating.
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If that offends anyone, I apologize. But hypocrisy really pisses me off. Picking fights pisses me off. And pretending to be something you're not (Examples related to the above include: weak, downtrodden, persecuted, innocent, peacable and kind) pisses me off.

Phew. Glad to finally get that venom out of my system. I mean, here I've been brewing all sorts of great NEW venom and had nowhere to put it. Join me next time when I'll either review some stuff or post some fiction of my own on
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