Marketing Chinese Children's Books : Paratext and the Politics of Authorship

An exploration of the marketing, presentation and construction of popular Chinese children''s authors for their youthful audience, parents and teachers, Marketing Chinese Children''s Books surveys the internal and international dissemination of children''s books and of international influences in the marketing of children''s literature.

Focusing on the paratextual elements of contemporary Chinese literature written for children such as author photographs, this book reveals the political constraints on the position of popular children''s author in the People''s Republic of China after the Cultural Revolution.

Taking the publications of Cao Wenxuan (the first Chinese recipient of the Hans Christian Anderson Award), Yang Hongying, Shen Shixi and Gerelchimeg Black Crane as case studies, Frances Weightman considers how the marketing of these authors presents them as academic and political authorities to be emulated and trusted, how they are demonstrative of the commercialism in children''s literature and what they expose about the different ways in which popular authors are promoted based on their gender, nationality and ethnicity. Also surveying the uses of animals in Chinese literature and the issues relating to language and translation when these works are promoted throughout the West, this is a timely study of the construct of authorship coinciding with the rapid expansion of children''s literature publishing in China and its reception on the world stage.