migrant

"How many borders must a man cross to get home?" - Theo Angelopoulos , "The Stork Wanders"

It's a silent story of a group of animals forced to leave their homes and embark on a journey, and it's a story that really plays out in today's world.

This wordless picture book tells the journey of a group of animals with powerful and moving images: they must leave the forest and travel through the dark night forest. They have to sacrifice things, give up their loved ones, and cross borders; fade. However, they cook and keep warm together on the way. Even though life and death accompany each other all the way, they still take care of each other, survive and move forward together. The hardships of the journey made the forest look like a barren desert with no end in sight. Can this group of migrants finally see hope?

It may be difficult for us to imagine that there are 258 million immigrants in the world, which accounts for almost 4% of all human beings. According to the latest UNHCR report, more than 70 million people fled war, persecution and conflict in 2018. People are forced to leave their homes for various reasons, and what they have in common is hope for the future, which is enough to allow them to overcome all difficulties and step into the unknown.

Author Issa Watanabe said: "I hope to describe each character's appearance through the clothes, colors, and expressions of each character. When a person becomes a migrant, they immediately become a statistic and gradually become a blurred immigrant. Crowds.” “Kids quickly develop empathy when they see animals, making the story universally relevant.”

Issa Watanabe's images directly depict a real, brutal contemporary phenomenon, symbolically presenting through stories a refugee scene that plays out every day in a corner of the world. The blue ibis, which first appeared in the picture book, represents the messenger connecting life and death, the past and the present in many cultures, and also implies that this is a difficult journey of life and death. The text on the back cover lists: hunger, tragedy, border closure, humanitarian crisis, human rights and other key words that cannot be ignored by the world. The story poetically reminds people to face the aforementioned crisis, and then let people see the surviving unity and empathy. heart, hope.