ABSTRACT
Animal images have always been common in children’s literature. As research on animals deepens, and animal novels become rich and detailed, the realistic approach to animals in children’s books has evolved as a popular genre. The genre can take several forms, but must always contend with the fact that any attempt to represent the nonhuman is mediated, and the nature and scope of the stories that can be told about animals will be shaped by these mediations. Children’s animal fiction in China is relatively recent, and has evolved through three stages (Wang 2011: 11–14). In the first stage, during the 1980s, novels mainly explore the relationship between animals and humans, in which animals are usually hunted by people. The narrative techniques are based on those employed in folk tales, legends, and animal fables and stories. In general, narration does not adopt the point of view of the animals or attribute them with subject positions, but writes about them, as in Shen Shixi’s The Seventh Courser, and The Life of A Vulture, Li Chuanfeng’s The Retired Army Dog Yellow Fox, Zhu Xinwang’s The Little Fox Huabei. The images of animals in these novels, quite symbolic and satiric, are the embodiment of an ethical pursuit that uses animals to “educate” people. In the second stage, animals become the protagonists in the novel, and their living environment and behavior have become the major concern in description. “The conflict, struggle and jungle law in the animal world are shown; complicated emotions related to death, love, hate, honor, disgrace, sorrow and joy in the animal-animal relationship have come into focus” (Wang: 11–14). Representative works are Shen Shixi’s The Dream of the Wolf King, and The Red Milch Goat, Jin Zenghao’s The Gray Wolf, Lin Jin’s The Death of the King of the Snow Mountain, amongst others. The third stage starts from the beginning of the twenty-first century and more often takes an ecological approach and blends a variety of writing techniques. Animal novels now “try to probe deep into animals from the ‘scientific’ perspective of animal behaviorism, and render a true picture of the animal life” (Wang: 11–14). Books like Shen Shixi’s The Slave Bird, Fang Min’s The Epic of Pandas, Heihe’s Dark Flame are of this category. On the other hand, if animal fiction is rather classified in terms of genres and representative writers and books, the following four categories become apparent.
