Little Yu and the Treelings

City-girl Little Yu just spent a glorious summer in the countryside with her grandparents. On the last day of her vacation, wishing she could stay forever, Little Yu notices peach blossom petals marching along the surface of the river. They sink and bob to the surface again, a pink rivulet flowing into the distance. Little Yu follows the blossoms to an enormous, mossy stone tablet carved with the histories of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the words: “Prohibited to cross!” Laughing in the face of this restriction, she hikes up a leg, crosses the stone fence, and sinks her feet into the muck and lichen of an ancient forest.

The moment Little Yu enters the forest, the world shifts. The peach blossom petals flow backwards, stop, and then begin to spin. Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice going down the rabbit hole or Hayao Miyazaki’s Chihiro entering the spirit world, Little Yu enters a forbidden world and must learn to trust her instincts at every turn. She meets and befriends the realm’s earthly guardians – puckish spirits of mountains, clouds, water, and wind. The first in a series of seven, Little Yu and the Treelings is a new fantasy classic. The celebrated artist and writer Xiong Liang masterfully blends ancient Chinese mythology, traditions, and tales, in a story that shares many features with the best graphic novels. Xiong Liang's ink-wash drawings are vivid and meticulous, filling the page with cave dwellings, intricate creature-made tools, towering cypress forests, and a large, graceful hound dog.