Yang said she learned to savor nature's beauty and this is a constant inspiration in her works.

Extensive reading is her other source of inspiration. She pays special attention to vivid descriptions, such as eating and drinking in A Dream of Red Mansions, and the debut of the protagonists in Outlaws of the Marsh.

"One point from each book, finely chewed, became nutrition for me," she said.

At 18, she became an elementary schoolteacher. She said she felt lonely, as she wasn't like her colleagues, dutiful but stern and always dwelling on their students' faults.

Yang recalled that her debut work was inspired by a survey of her grade 2 elementary students that found the textbooks they used offered few articles the children really liked.

She believes that children should be happy and liberated from school and parental pressure. She sought answers in the classics by international educators such as Vasyl Sukhomlynsky (1918-1970) of the former Soviet Union. Her notes on the subject were more than a meter high.

Having been a teacher for seven years and a children's literature magazine editor for another seven, Yang believes children's book writers should have years of experience with children, a profound understanding of society, and most importantly, the ability to abstract life's essence using simple language.

Children's book critic Tan Xudong said one of the key reasons for Yang's huge success is that she understands and feels close to children. She writes from their perspective and conveys wisdom.

"I'm not writing just fun books," she said. She offers no fantasy worlds for her readers, who are predominantly elementary school students, aged 6-12. She teaches them to deal with both happiness and sadness, offering the keys to ease the sorrows of growing up.

In Mo's Mischief, elementary school boy Mo-Shen Ma (Ma Xiaotiao) is far from the perfect straight-A student.

"Ma makes mistakes and matures from correcting them. Readers like him because he's ordinary, like them, and they grow up with him. There aren't many characters like Ma in the literary world, so readers like to join him on his great adventures," the writer said.

But Ma is a good-hearted boy, a motif that she took to heart from her father.

"Children like the real, the good and the beautiful," she said. "My stories are fundamentally about being good people, with love, sincerity and lenience."

She said she'll never follow a trend or pursue profit and describes writing as walking on thin ice. She says she may spend three months on a novel's beginning.

Publisher and critic Zheng Zhong believes Yang has opened up a new era for children's literature.

"In the past decade, she's been the only domestic writer who can compete with foreign writers at this level," Zheng said. "Yang gets children to read. Parents are thankful to Yang that her books have torn their children away from their computer screens."

Yang added that though she offers Chinese wisdom, this has a universal value, as it addresses basic human needs.

The humorous and smart language, written simply, makes her books accessible even after translation.

Harper Collins has paid a lot of attention to rendering the essence of her books while continuing to localize the language, Chou said.

"Although you're able to write beautifully with a fountain pen as an adult, you must abandon it and swiftly move to pencil, even better to colored pencils, when you write for children," Yang said.

(China Daily December 24, 2010)