Yang Hongying facts for kids

Yang Hongying was born on May 12, 1962. She is a very popular Chinese writer who creates amazing stories for children. Some people even call her "China's J. K. Rowling"! By 2013, her books had sold over 50 million copies. She has been known as one of China's richest writers since 2006. Her most famous books include the Mo's Mischief series and the Diary of a Smiling Cat series.

Where Did Yang Hongying Grow Up?

Yang Hongying was born in 1962 in Chengdu, a city in Sichuan Province, China. She was the youngest child of Yang Tianxiao, who worked in an office. She says her parents gave her lots of freedom. This helped her grow and develop her own ideas. When she was young, she didn't read much. But as a teenager, she loved reading classic Chinese novels. Books like Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber fascinated her. She read parts of them many times. She also studied how each character was introduced. She says this helped her a lot with her own writing later on.

How Did Yang Hongying Start Writing?

After finishing her teacher training, Yang Hongying became a Chinese teacher in 1980. She taught at a primary school. At that time, there weren't many fun books for kids to read. So, after teaching for a year, she started writing her own stories. She wrote them just for her students!

Her very first story was called A Seed in a Swimsuit. It was about a lotus seed that floated around in its green "swimsuit." This idea came from a popular cartoon called Little Tadpoles Looking for Mama. Her class loved the story! Because of their excitement, she wrote over 100 more stories in the next few years.

Becoming a Published Author

A children's newspaper in Shanghai started printing her stories. This made her more well-known. Soon, she got a contract to publish her own books! After teaching for seven years, she got a new job. She became an editor for children's books at a publishing house.

In the early 1990s, she became the chief editor of a children's magazine. This is when she started writing the Mo's Mischief series. These stories are about a boy named Ma Xiaotiao. He is naughty but also very kind. Yang Hongying says the idea for Ma Xiaotiao came from one of her own students.

Her Most Famous Books

In 2000, her book A Girl's Diary became very popular across China. This novel is about a preteen girl. Yang Hongying based the character on her own daughter. This book sold two million copies!

But her Mo's Mischief series became even more successful. By 2013, there were 20 books in this series. They had sold over 30 million copies! She also started the Diary of a Smiling Cat series in 2006. These books are for younger children, usually between seven and nine years old. By 2013, she had written 18 books in this series, selling 20 million copies.

HarperCollins, a big publishing company, bought the rights to translate her books. They wanted to share her stories with children in other languages. By 2010, they had translated six books from the Mo's Mischief series into English. They sold 200,000 copies of these English versions.

In 2012, she published a collection of essays called "Reasons for Loving Zaizai." In November 2019, she launched a picture book for young children called "Panda Diary."

See also

In Spanish: Yang Hongying para niños