Not long ago I purchased a new textless book for the library. I have been building up quite a collection of textless books as the teaching of visual literacy has given them a new credibility. The book The Birthday Cake Mystery came from Gecko Press, the New Zealand publishing company that has been translating foreign language books and thus bringing us the best of European books. I noticed the book was by The Tjong-Khing and I had only seen one other of his books, Andrew's Angry Words which is written by Dorothea Lachner. I knew nothing about him, but really liked this new book so I set about learning more about him. I learned that his birthday was August 4th and I made a mental note to remember to write about him on the blog and then got busy and promptly forgot.
The Tjong-Khing was born in Java to a large Indonesian-Chinese family. He moved to the Netherlands in 1956 and has been based there since, illustrating, drawing comics and being involved in film. Currently there is an exhibition of his work in the Children's Book Museum in The Hague. I don't read any Dutch but enjoyed looking
at this clip. He has won many awards for illustration including the Max Velthuijs Award in 2010, which is awarded to a Dutch illustrator every three years. Now I am on the search for the prequel to this new book. It is called Where is the Cake?
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