After Dad left, Mom would check every door and window each night, carefully closing them tightly.
She constantly checked, and never stopped reminding me, to close the doors and windows tightly.
She said there were huge noises, strange smells, and terrifying figures outside the windows, as if they could break in at any moment.
But I never saw any of those things; outside the window, everything looked as usual.
Flowers bloomed, flowers withered, and the windows remained tightly shut.
Mom was waiting for Dad to come home.
Until one day, we finally no longer had to be afraid.
What kind of scenery awaited us outside the window?
This book does not directly preach, but instead allows children to feel the oppression and anxiety left behind after the authoritarian era through delicate images and scenarios.
This is a work suitable for parent-child reading, leading children into the emotions of history through images and metaphors, guiding them to experience the fear and silence left by the authoritarian era.
Parents can also use this to converse with their children: What exactly happened in that era? What did people at that time encounter? And how did they live, feel, and cope with these traumas?
This is not just an echo of history, but also a gentle guiding light, leading us to look at the weight of freedom, fear, and memory with deeper understanding.
Book Features
Third Prize in the 4th "Drawing Stories: Tales of an Island" Human Rights Education Picture Book Workshop by the National Human Rights Museum.
Symbolic representation of a microcosm of family life for "prisoners outside prison" after Taiwan's authoritarian era.
Through the child's perspective, it observes the family wounds left by Taiwan's authoritarian era, and also glimpses the life microcosm of political victims' families as "prisoners outside prison." Through the special medium of transparent pages and flip designs, the book illustrates the difference between "visible" and "invisible" fears between children and adults, as well as the tenderness and inclusivity with which children come to understand these wounds over time.
Recommended by
Hai Gou Fang Dong (Picture Book Creator)
Liu Xu Gong (Picture Book Author, author of "Cat Ramen")
Peng Ren Yu (Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica)
