Gale

A young boy gets up so early that fog is still resting on the river, and goes with his grandfather, his yeye, seven miles north to the grassy field behind their home. They are there to cut satintail grass to feed the livestock. Then a huge gale scatters the hay and undoes a whole day of work.

The story uses that moment to explore endurance, impermanence and how to let go and ride out a storm in a world that can feel overwhelming and beyond anyone's control. The tone is quiet and reflective, and the story is semiautobiographical.

This is the first picture book by Mo Yan, the Nobel Prize-winning author of Red Sorghum and Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, and it is adapted from his short story of the same name. The illustrations are by Zhu Chengliang, a nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The sparse, lyrical text was translated by author-illustrator Ying-Hwa Hu, who aimed to keep the tone and rhythm of the original Chinese.