Two careers converge
Just because a picture book is finished doesn’t mean it will be published right away. More often than not, the process takes years. Tsao’s first picture book, So... Very... Itchy!, was finished in 2001 and won the top award in the picture book category at the 9th Chen Guo Zheng Children’s Literature Awards, but was not actually published until 2006. And then it was another six years before she again went to publication with Birthday Tree.
Having first started making picture books in 1988, Huang first published in 1999, when he won the 3rd Mandarin Daily News Reed Pipe Award for Children’s Literature for Mr. Urumqi’s Vacation. Now, in 2015, 16 years later, he has reworked the earlier book, publishing it again under the title Mr. Urumqi’s Thousand Little Lambs, which features brighter colors than the original. Quite clearly, a pleasing story will stand the test of time. All these years later, kids still get a kick out of Mr. Urumqi.
Back when it all began, Huang and Tsao had only planned to be each other’s first readers. And, in fact, they often faced off against each other in various competitions. But after many years together, they came to see that their different strengths were mutually complementary. In 2012, the two collaborated for the first time to produce Spotted Dog. From the very start, when Huang first conceived of the story, he had planned to turn it over to Tsao to do the illustrations.
It was a simple love of drawing that first attracted the two toward picture books. With never a thought that they would ever publish, they simply kept on for the pure joy of it. Now that they’ve each published multiple picture books, they feel more sure than ever that this is what they’ll be doing for the rest of their lives. Huang chuckles: “We’re a bit older now, but in the field of picture books, we still qualify as young newcomers. We still have a lot of stories that we want to draw. Our dream is only just getting started.”
Tsao Juei-chih weaves a romance into the storyline of Birthday Tree, which is quite rare in picture books from Taiwan. The book is very popular not only with small children, but also with teenage girls.
The husband–wife team of Huang Yi-chin (left) and Tsao Juei-chih (right) have given each other encouragement in their careers, and each long ago promised to be the other’s first reader.