Small Beasts

Small Beasts is a collection of short animal stories by children's author Zhang Xiaoxia, published by Liaoning Fine Arts Publishing House in 2018. The book adopts the perspectives of wild animals, observing and feeling the natural world through the eyes of seven wild species and placing each animal's circumstances, instincts, and emotions at the center of the story, so that readers come to know the mountain forests, grasslands, and the ecological environment interwoven with human activity anew through the eyes of the beasts. The work does not rely on anthropomorphic moralizing; it seeks to stay close to the animals' real circumstances with restrained prose, presenting the resilience, alertness, and vulnerability of wild life, as well as the pressures and changes human activity brings to the animal world. As a collection of linked short stories, each piece can be read independently, while together they form a polyphonic picture of nature: the survival problems a reader sees in one animal's story are often echoed in another's. The book was shortlisted for the final evaluation of the Tenth National Outstanding Children's Literature Award and is regarded as one of the more distinctive animal-themed children's novels of recent years, suitable as an entry point for young readers into nature writing and into understanding life and ecological issues.