Zeno Sworder's shrinking parents work wins Picture Book of the Year

After moving from Bendigo to Melbourne and finishing school he studied and worked in a range of fields, including as a diplomat, migration agent and jeweller.

But when a story book created for his two daughters - Lelea and Maya, now aged 11 and 6 - was picked up by a publisher and ultimately won several awards, his career began to take a different direction.

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The idea behind his book This Small Blue Dot was to create a "bridge" for the girls to the wisdom and character of his Chinese grandmother, or nainai, and his father - who had both recently passed away.

The book, containing "all the funny and interesting and wise things" these two huge figures in his life had taught Sworder growing up, proved to be extremely popular and won him several accolades, including the Children's Book Council of Australia 2021 New Illustrator of the Year title.

This year the reception of his second book, My Strange Shrinking Parents, has cemented a career for Sworder as a children's author and illustrator.

The work, described by publisher Thames & Hudson as "a heartbreaking and heart-warming story of the sacrifices parents make for their children", was last month named the CBCA Picture Book of the Year and has also taken out awards for its cover and overall design.

In it, a young boy's migrant parents who arrive in their new country with "old shoes and empty pockets" shrink in size as they strike deals to exchange centimetres of their height for things their son needs, such as school uniforms and birthday cake.

The story has been described by Australian reviewers as "a moving work of art" and by the New York Times as "poignant and fantastical", its "soft pencil-and-watercolor illustrations", inspired by Japanese woodblock prints "rich with emotion and atmosphere".

It all started in Bendigo, where Sworder attended Girton and Creek Street Primary.

Although he has fond memories of his teachers, growing up he was "a very strange and lonely child", who didn't fit in at school, Sworder says.

"It wasn't only having a kind of a Chinese mother and feeling a bit different from the rest of the kids and eating slightly different food.

"It was also that I had terrible eczema all over my face and my neck.

"I also felt that Mum and Dad had done a terrible disservice to me by giving me a strange name like Zeno."

His father, Roger Sworder, was a philosophy lecturer at Bendigo College of Advanced Education (later La Trobe University), who had a fascination with literature as well as Greek philosophy.

His mother, Nancy Tsou, was a concert pianist and piano teacher who came from a Taiwanese family but had been born in South Africa.

It made for an unconventional upbringing for Sworder and his sister, Zoe.

"We grew up around a lot of creative people," Sworder says.

"Mum and Dad knew a lot of artists living in and around Bendigo. In particular, there was a painter who would come through and visit us called John Wolseley, who paints incredible Australian landscapes."

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The family didn't have a car or television, and the kids relied on books and drawing for escape.

Sworder remembers visiting his neighbour, Betty, to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on TV then going home to draw pictures of the characters.

While a lack of diversity at the time might have made life harder for a multicultural boy in a country town, Bendigo's embrace of its Chinese heritage was something that made a real difference to Sworder.

He remembers often going to the Golden Dragon Museum and taking turns as a lion dancer in the dragon parade.

"I think it's beautiful the way Bendigo has honoured its Chinese history, and as a young boy I think it made a huge difference," he says.

"Because growing up the only real image I had of China was the paintings you see on the side of teapots at Chinese restaurants."

After the first few years of school, the Sworder kids moved with their mum to Melbourne, where they lived on the outskirts of the housing commission flats in Carlton and made friends with kids from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds.

It was the first time Sworder had met other children with strange names, he says, and spending time with their families he recognised similarities in their upbringing.

"My experience was that Aussie parents were often very affectionate in giving their kids lots of hugs and kisses, whereas a lot of the migrant parents were more comfortable showing their affection through food and the daily sacrifices they made to ensure their kids were well clothed and fed and had the opportunities to do things they may not have had growing up in a different country," Sworder says.

The inspiration for his shrinking parent "fairytale" came from those insights and the realisation, after becoming a parent, of the degree of his own mother's sacrifice.

His daughter Maya, it turned out, also suffered from eczema, and it brought back memories of his own childhood experience of the condition.

As a boy, his eczema was so bad he would scratch a layer of skin off during the night.

After trying everything else, his mum started sitting by the bed and holding his hands while he slept.

"I would often wake up in the morning and her head would be on the side of the bed and she would have stayed there the whole night, and her arms would still be outstretched," Sworder says.

"It was only as an adult that I really understood that what she was doing was sacrificing a night of sleep for herself so that I could get a good night of sleep instead."

A growing appreciation for the "quieter form of love" he received from his parents was the starting point of the book, he says.

These days Sworder is on the author circuit and spending a lot of time giving workshops in schools, something he finds "really rewarding and incredibly good fun".

He loves the opportunity to encourage kids not to get self-conscious and leave their creativity behind.

"So going in and being able to tell the kids that I was never the best artist in my class growing up, and that, you know, telling stories is really just about putting what's in your heart and your imagination onto a piece of paper so that you can share it with other people," he says.

The author-illustrator also hopes in his work, both inside and beyond the book, to impart that: "For all children, regardless of the differences in their lives, their sense of who they are, of who they can be, is going to change over time.

"And the things that they may have been embarrassed about or ashamed about, like the character in this book, are things that they will [likely] hold very closely to themselves and define themselves with ... as they get older."

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