It was nearing the end of the second day of the China Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair, which ran from November 17 to 19. But the crowd of excited children and their parents and educators was only growing larger at the main stage. They were there for the afternoon author presentation on The Amazing Mind of Mikey series.

The children were drawn to 10-year-old Mikey and his many adventures with his loyal sidekick, a black cat named Mimi. But the main attraction of the event seemed to be the author himself: U.S.-born C.A. Scully, who switched from English to Chinese and back throughout the talk, and entertained his audience with stories about his childhood “addiction” to Pokémon video games and near-nonexistent reading habit, and his journey from teaching English to kindergartners in China to writing children’s books for the Chinese market.

The Amazing Mind of Mikey series, which debuted in January 2022 from Phoenix Fine Arts Publishing, has sold around 16,000 copies in China despite Covid-19 restrictions that decimated book tour opportunities. The first four titles—Tiny-Handed Trouble, Clash of Colossal Creatures, Battle with the Bloated Baddie, and Magician Mayhem—are available separately and as a full set. A second set of books, which will be released in 2025, is already in the works.

Targeted at children ages eight to 12, the series portrays a hopelessly bored boy who is unaware of his mind’s true potential. His parents surprise him with a pet cat and together they travel to faraway lands, meet interesting characters—a bald witch, a circus monkey bent on hypnotizing them, and a pirate with a hoop for a hand, for instance—and Mikey’s life is no longer dull and dreary.

Creating and Adapting the Series

Initially, the series was going to be titled Gordon Is Bored. “The idea was that the protagonist was bored despite the amazing events and adventures happening around him,” said Scully, who majored in Chinese Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and came to China on a student exchange program 10 years ago; he now resides in Shanghai. “He was going to be glum and gloomy throughout the series, seemingly unfazed by the magic he experienced. I had planned it to be sort of a tongue-in-cheek joke—like making Eeyore the main character of Winnie-the-Pooh.”

But then Scully and his editors started to consider the importance of educational values in children’s books to Chinese parents and educators. “The plot was recrafted along the lines of Gordon—now Mikey—growing as a person in some way,” Scully told PW. “The books are also bilingual to encourage children to fall in love with reading English. The Chinese section has more illustrations while the English section features Test Your Knowledge quizzes.”

In the first book, Mikey overcomes boredom by discovering that his imagination can whisk him away to faraway lands. Next, he learns how to resolve anger issues after dealing with an irksome pirate. Then he makes his way to icy Harbin, the capital city of China’s northernmost province, and learns a lesson about littering. And in the fourth book, Mikey faces his stage fright by performing magic tricks at the school talent show.

“When writing the series, I tried to make sure the level of English used would be easy enough for upper elementary school students to understand, while at the same time challenging them here and there,” Scully said. “This is a lot trickier than it sounds. But I had the time and opportunity to familiarize myself with materials available in the market for this particular age group before diving in.”

Scully began by re-reading Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House, a series he had grown up with, and paid close attention to the difficulty of the language used. As he wrote, he fed his work into an online Lexile score scanner to check on the sentence length and difficulty of the vocabulary. “In this way, I tried to ensure my stories would be on target reading level,” Scully said.

He added, “One thing I love about writing The Amazing Mind of Mikey is the world- and character-building process. I tried to keep a sense of mystery about who Mikey is and where he is from. He has blonde hair, for example, but celebrates Chinese New Year and takes a school trip to Harbin. This was quite intentional; the goal was to provide a character who could appeal to both Western and Chinese kids.”

Culturally, Scully finds that while Chinese students are capable of many things Western students are generally not, they tend to struggle more with independent thinking and creativity. “As an English teacher working here, I have experienced this first-hand,” he said. “The education system can be way more rinse-and-repeat than what you see in the Western world, with more of a focus on rote memorization.”

This insight heavily influenced Scully’s writing of the series. “I wanted to provide adventure stories that could help kids improve their English from an educational standpoint, but would also push them to expand their imagination,” he said. “I believe that a big part of language learning relies on that sense of creativity. So I have included ‘Test Your Imagination’ prompts throughout the four titles in the second—and final—volume of the series. These prompts, found at the end of each chapter, encourage the reader to think about a plot point from a different and more personal perspective.”

From Editing to Marketing the Series

“The Amazing Mind of Mikey series came out in 2022 and the only way to market it at that time was virtually through online platforms,” said Julia Zhu, deputy editor-in-chief at Phoenix Fine Arts Publishing, a division of the Phoenix Publishing and Media Group. “We invited Scully to do a livestream on Taobao, Kuaishou, and Weibo, and the audience saw, for the first time, a non-native author introducing his bilingual series in English and Chinese.”

Sales started slowly, mostly due to the intense competition in the livestreaming marketplace, Zhu said. “However, over time, online sales have picked up significantly.” With the Amazing Mind of Mikey series selected for the booklist for Yangzhong, a city in Jiangsu Province (where the company is based), 1,000 sets were sold within a short time.

“We had book events at the Beijing and Shanghai international book fairs this year,” Zhu said. “Scully also visited several international schools both in China and in the U.S. We also hosted several livestream events and will have three more such events for reading groups this year.”

For Zhu and her team, it was risky choosing to work with a non-native debut author. “When Scully shared his idea for the Mikey series, we were interested but were wary of potential language and cultural barriers,” Zhu said. “We proposed several changes to the draft. Scully’s immediate response was one of willingness and open-mindedness.”

Zhu added, “Scully’s Chinese is really good and we hardly have any miscommunications due to language or cultural differences. And he always maintained a positive attitude even when we asked him to revise early drafts again and again, or when we had few viewers for the livestream events. He also took the initiative to reach out to illustrators on Instagram and connect us with them for the series. We hope to continue working with him on more titles.”

Phoenix Fine Arts Publishing House started adding children’s books—including picture books, activity titles, and science series for toddlers to elementary school students—to its catalog about 11 years ago. “Our bestselling children’s title is Tangxiaotuan, an adventure history series that has sold tens of millions of copies in China,” Zhu said. “Our focus is on books with adventurous plots accompanied by artistic illustrations—perfect for sparking children’s imaginations while reinforcing good reading habits. Scully’s The Amazing Mind of Mikey series fits that to a T.”

Tangxiaotuan, coincidentally, was one of the series that Scully read while conducting his market research on the Chinese children’s book market. “In 2017, while working at a kindergarten, my thoughts started to gravitate towards my dream of writing books for children. On weekends, I would visit bookstores around Shanghai. It was a journey to understand the market and also great practice for brushing up on my Mandarin.”

And while going through the shelves, Scully discovered one major thing: that at the back of each book was the editor’s email address. “This was something I had never seen—and have yet to see—in Western books. I wondered then if it would be appropriate to contact the editors by email to introduce myself and present my idea of a series. In the end, I decided to give it a shot and I contacted the editor of Tangxiaotuan, which has some similarities to the series I had in mind. And that brought us to the first volume of The Amazing Mind of Mikey.”

Aside from wrapping up The Amazing Mind of Mikey series, Scully is also working on a new series about two girls who are sucked into a mysterious book of fairy tales, inside of which their presence creates new twists on classic stories such as “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Cinderella,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and more. In addition, Scully is dipping his toes into the world of picture books.