Contributing to the growing debates on children and media worldwide, Little Friends explores the pervasive presence of film culture in the lives of children in China. The book also introduces the work of the little-known Children's Film Studio and the Film Course, a reform-period attempt by Chinese filmmakers and policy leaders to control the media to which schoolchildren were exposed. Stephanie Hemelryk Donald uses rich firsthand interviews, children's drawings, and film history to tell a compelling cinematic story before it is forgotten in the onrush of globalized culture. She is especially careful to bring in the interests and experiences of children themselves. Scholars and students of Asian and children's film and education will find this unique work a fascinating window into Chinese culture and society and a provocative exploration of media culture.

Stephanie Donald is a joint coordinator of the Centre project on children's media and the formation of citizenship in urban and rural China. He earned his PhD from University of Sussex in UK. She has published extensively in the fields of culture, art, politics and media in China. Her recent publications include: Public Secrets: Public Spaces: Cinema and Civility in China (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000); The Pengiun Atlas of Media and Information, with Mark Balnaves and James Donald (Pengium, 2001); and Media in China: Content, Consumption and Change, edited with Michael Keane and Yin Hong (Curzon Press, 2001).