Publisher's synopsis
‘This is your one chance. You have your secret dreams. Follow them! Make them come true . . . ‘
In a poor village in northern China, a small boy is about to be taken away from everything he’s ever known. He is so afraid, but his mother urges him to follow his dreams. For soon he will become a dancer, one of the finest dancers in the world . . .
So begins The Peasant Prince, the true story of Li Cunxin’s extraordinary life. Based upon his internationally best-selling memoir, Mao’s Last Dancer, this remarkable picture book captures the essence of one of the most inspiring stories to come from China in many years.
With hauntingly beautiful illustrations by award-winning artist Anne Spudvilas, Li’s journey of courage and determination is simply told, and as powerful as any fairytale.
Illustrator
Click here to read more about Anne Spudvilas.
Li Cunxin was born in 1961, in the New Village, Li Commune, near the city of Qingdao on the coast of north-east China. The sixth of seven sons in a poor rural family, Li’s peasant life in Chairman Mao’s communist China changed dramatically when, at the age of eleven, he was chosen by Madame Mao’s cultural advisers to become a student at the Beijing Dance Academy. After a summer school in America, for which he was one of only two students chosen, he defected to the West and became a principal dancer for the Housten Ballet.
Li went on to become one of the best male dancers in the world. He is now a senior manager in a major stockbroking firm and lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife Mary and their three children, Sophie, Tom and Bridie.
Li’s autobiography, Mao’s Last Dancer, has sold over 400,000 copies and has been published in over 20 countries.
Anne Spudvilas is one of Australia’s foremost picture book illustrators and is an established artist. She divides her time between commissioned portraits, her work as a courtroom artist, and her award-winning illustrations for children’s books.
Her first picture book, The Race by Christobel Mattingley, won the Crichton Award for Illustration and was an Honour Book in the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Awards in 1996. Anne has produced many award-winning picture books, including Jenny Angel by Margaret Wild, winner of the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award, 2000, and Woolvs in the Sitee by Margaret Wild, shortlisted for the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award, 2007 and joint winner in the Children’s Short Story category of the 2006 Aurealis Awards.
Anne also illustrated The Peasant Prince, the picture book based on Li Cunxin’s international best-selling autobiography Mao’s Last Dancer – now a hugely successful motion picture. Anne travelled to China with Li to visit his home town of Qingdao and to meet his family, gathering valuable background material for the book.
She has illustrated several chapter books in the Aussie Nibbles and Aussie Bites series and more recently collaborated with Isobelle Carmody to produce the beautiful and haunting The Night School.
