In this episode we talk with Davy Liu, former Disney animator, about his books, films and dreams for the future and his desire to create a thirst for God’s word in children’s lives.
Our Guest: Davy Liu
Growing up, Davy struggled with his academic studies in Taiwan. The idea that “you are nobody unless you become like the perfect kid next door” led him to be consumed by the darkness of low self-esteem. During his first year in the United States, he found his life calling: not in making straight A’s but in drawing straight lines. His artistic talent quickly led him to work for Walt Disney Animation on classic films such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan and Star Wars franchise
Davy Liu is the president of Kendu Films in Los Angeles. Davy is an innovative creator who brings stories of faith and hope to the world—a pioneer in bringing imaginative storytelling to the corporate world with story-driven products and services, creating timeless content and IP to inspire individuals, families, and businesses.
He now lives an abundant life journey “From The Lion King to the King of kings”.
You Kendu it!
Books Discussed in This Episode:
Transcript with Links:
Terrie:
Welcome to “Books That Spark,” a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Today we have a very special guest and his name is Davy Liu. He is the author and illustrator of six books, and we are so excited to get to talk with him. God has given him a wonderful vision for reaching kids with the Gospel. Thank you for being with us today.
Davy Liu:
Ah, you’re welcome. And so exciting. Thank you so much for allowing me to share here on your podcast.
Terrie:
Well, I’m really excited to hear your story, and I know you used to animate for Disney. Can you tell us a little bit of what caused you to change and start doing this ministry?
Davy Liu:
You know, when I got in there, I was one of those young kids want to that work at Disney and work on Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, Mulan. So I really realized that, you know, I work at Disney and even though Disney’s not church, but Disney is definitely the biggest children’s ministry, and I see how impactful they are. So doing, in 1998, I was working at the studio and my job was to produce content and develop new projects. And then I saw one of the projects they were developing was about a boy who wants to be a girl. Then I realized that this company’s objective was really to take down the children into the wrong alley. And I, you know, being a believer it was hard for me to, you know, not wanting to do anything about that. So that was the thing that really prompted me to begin to think about, you know, what can I do with the talent that God’s giving me? Am I going to keep staying here for my salary or am I going to answer to God to the talent that he’s given me? That was a struggle, but I eventually left and went to work for Star Wars, but that two years kind of allowed me to reflect what I’m going to create. How can I bring the Bible to the unchurched, to children that embrace such as Disney? How can I take from Book of Genesis, the Book of Revelations and be really creative to reach the kids that would not go to church?
Terrie:
So you’ve written six books now.
Davy Liu:
So I’ve written The Giant Leaf. It’s how animals discovered Noah’s Ark. I developed that actually in Disney, and Disney loved that story except they would like me to change two animals going there, two male turtle and two female dove. I did not want to compromise. So I took that script and it came back to me. So, I continue to with that genre, you know, after year 2000, I began to write a whole series of it. It’s a fish perspective Moses and talks about prayer. Jordan’s Guest, the third one, I worked with R.C. Sproul regarding how animals discover that Jesus became the ultimate animal sacrifice, so they don’t have to kill their sons anymore. Then the lion perspective of Daniel, why the lions didn’t eat Daniel that day. And the fifth one is beautiful, majestic ladies’ perspective. They want to be beautiful, but they think if they eat this fruit, they might die. So they set up Eve to find out if they really die. And the sixth one just finished during Covid. It’s a whale and mermaid’s perspective of Jonah.
Terrie:
Wow. I’ve read some of them. I have all of them, but I haven’t read them all yet. But I love The Royal Feast, where it’s the lion’s perspective of Daniel’s story. I just thought it, it’s just so wonderful. What I love about them is, first of all, it’s very unique. You don’t just tell the story where the animal is watching it happen. You bring spiritual lessons into the animal relationships. Every story is just filled with spiritual lessons, like you said, on prayer and integrity and choosing the right path. And I’m, I mean, it’s just brilliant. And of course the illustrations are amazing. I really love these. I think it’s very unique and God has given you an awesome platform to really share His words, so that’s amazing.
Davy Liu:
Thank You. Thank you, Terrie.
Terrie:
Well give us a little picture of your vision for the future of this ministry. What do you plan to do?
Davy Liu:
Yeah, so my, my plan, which I have haven’t changed in the last two decades, really, I didn’t plan on writing the book. So these books that you saw, they came from an animation script. So the script’s about 90 minutes long. So my plan is really make each one of them, each book a feature animated film, just like Disney’s feature animated films. I really wanted to see a biblical gospel has a high quality output. So we’re trying to raise investors and find investors that people understood what we’re trying to do. And uh, so far we have our major investors are In-N-Out Burgers’ CEO. So we really are still looking for people that willing to come and support us regarding, you know, I know that sounds crazy to people. Like, wow, you know, how much do you need? So, you know, I recognize that this is such a different world from the Christian. When they produce something, it’s very low budget or sometime no budget, you know, and we’re talking about competing with Disney. We want something that’s equally same quality. So that does require, you know, funding, not same, we only want one fifth of what Disney creates as the budget that we’re going to really create the same quality, same output, same kind of investment return. And that’s really is the long vision. I’m planning on doing 12 books so that every child, when they’re from age 1 to 12, they have an opportunity in the theater, in their smartphone, that everybody grew up with these potentials, the seeds that we’re going to plant in them with these animal point-of-view of the biblical Gospel. And then also give churches a tool. Imagine The Lion King if Disney allowed churches to use it for VBS or Sunday school. Can you imagine how flooded the church will be? The same thing, we really want to create that kind of mainstream movement so that every kid can embrace this. That they all say of these books that you got, Terrie, they were endorsed as the best children’s moral book in China in 2013. And, you know, again, if you see our books, they don’t have any religious look to it. They, the character like, you know, when we talk about prayer, the fish learn how to pray. The word for fish learn how to pray is they call to the “Fin Maker” for help. So you can tell that all the words that we use is intentionally so that the kids will get the message, just like Jesus with the parables and everything, 57 parables that Jesus taught in the New Testament, none of them has religious Sunday school feel to it. It does require somebody to explain the biblical gospel. So when our film comes out, we want to follow up of teaching, how do you teach the story of the allegory, the theology of the hidden message, the Gospel, that it’s in each of these animated films.
Terrie:
That’s wonderful. So that, I’m really excited that they’re using them in China. That’s really exciting. So do you have a companion parenting, you know, book that if we use these in homeschool that, then we could talk about the Christian principles that we are being taught for parents. Do you have a companion guide or anything that they can find on your website or anything?
Davy Liu:
So far we only have most of them, they only have about a page eight and a half to kind of tell parents like, “Hey, this is why we’re doing this thing, where we’re going.” So these are all free, all they do has to subscribe to KenduKids.org and then we will send those to them PDF form. So they, they’re all free to the parents.
Terrie:
Oh that’s great. And Kendu Kids in case you need to know, this is K E N D U Kids. I love how you say you can do it. Yeah. And you, is that how you came up with the name was that way?
Davy Liu:
That’s exactly right. So Kendu, it all really came up when I was a kid in Taiwan. I was a straight F kid in a straight A world and then, you know, my mom think I couldn’t do it. Then I came to America, I had an art class and then my art teacher told me, you can do it. So, because if someone had believe in me, the word can do became so special. I never heard of “can do.” Everybody always tell me I can do it because of this “can do.” And she gave me a piece of paper I realized I can’t make straight A’s, but I can draw straight lines. So I recognize that every kid is different and unique. And then I became the first Chinese kid who got into Disney. So thank my art teacher for believing me and giving me that word, can do. And so can do is now, it’s our company’s local icon spirit. And that can do also enforce in Philippians 4:13 that I can do all things through Christ. If I only knew that I can do all things through Christ, I wouldn’t have confined myself as a straight A kid or become the typical parents’ dream and I got to be me in Christ. I am able to find my calling and that’s become an artist and just be able to draw straight lines for Christ.
Terrie:
Oh, I love that. Do you have, if any films that are out now, I saw you had some short films on your website. Can you tell us a little about those?
Davy Liu:
So in uh, about, you know, after Chinese, uh, endorse our books, we have a Chinese company. So all the books that we, you have here, they’re all in digital book format in Chinese and in English. So what we did is we translate those and we made it real simple, and then so they can choose dual languages. So unfortunately we sold out all our animated short DVDs, but we are giving everyone a free copy. If they purchase a set, we will send them the free digital book. It’s called The Giant Leaf, which is, that’s our first feature animated film. And The Giant Leaf’s main character is Kendu the little fox.
Terrie:
Yes. He’s so cute. and I love that story. I saw that when we lived in Taiwan in our bookstore at our church, that was my first exposure to your books. I think you only had two books out at that time when we were there, right?
Davy Liu:
Yeah, The Fire Fish was the second one, and then the Fire Fish, the main character Fire Fish that little fish named Sesom. So if you flip it backwards, it’s Moses. So we have a lot of this really hidden secret thing that’s fun for children’s that discover for parents to discover. So the third one, Jordan’s Guest, which is a story about this donkey’s best friend, these two little dirty pigs, but eventually the best guest is Jesus. So these two dirty little pigs they’re twins and they’re only friends of this little donkey cause nobody wants to be this friends with this donkey Jordan. So these two twin pigs are named siblings, the sister’s name is Jen, the boy’s name is Tile. So their name together is called Gentile. So it’s kind of all these fun hidden things for, again, for readers to kind of discover.
Terrie:
That’s so cool. You mentioned the first three a little more in detail. Can you go ahead and tell us about, you mention we also talked about The Royal Feast. Yeah. Give us a little more information about the last two.
Davy Liu:
Yeah, the last two. So The Enchanted Tree, it’s like, wow, how do you talk about, like, if you disobey God and you would die, Right? I mean these are all real hard subjects. So when I, when I worked on The Lion King, it was such a sensitive topic when we talk about losing father and death. So in Disney animation we can’t show death, we can’t show blood, we can’t talk about this. But these are real life, how children learn about losing their families and their especially father. So we had to come 150 ways of how to kill Mufasa. Right? It took us three months and, wow. So how do you talk about the beginning of sin, of Mankind when they disobeyed God, the consequences of that, right? I mean that’s the biggest part that children need. Understand from the beginning what happened, in the Garden of Eden. So in that moment, it took us a long time. There was, obviously, we’re talking about, you know, how do you tell the story from the animals in the Garden of Eden. So again, there’s this hidden things here that you will see. I can’t give it all away, you know, I’ll give one, one or two just to make it fun, entertaining. So as you can see some of these visuals, again, our books are heavy and visual as you can see. Because uh, you know, we were taught in Disney, you know, pictures speak a thousand words. When you see our pictures, right, so in The Giant Leaf, all the way too. Every book has gazelles. And so the gazelle, it took Kendu to this journey. Second one you’ll find gazelle him under the sea. So kids will go there, find gazelle, gazelle stands for the Holy Spirit, the, uh, angel Gabriel, you know, from the Book of Revelation. So he is in there. So you’ll see the shadows and some of these artworks, so kids can kind of pick out. So on the fourth book, The Enchanted Tree, it’s really the story of where this Gabriel, the angels, where he came from, his origin and what was his responsibility? He was, his responsibility was to carry out God’s command. So any of our books, you know that there’s no word God or angel, it’s all animal. It’s as of your pets can read my picture, book the Bible stories, the pets will get it. It’s designed for your pets. If your pets can get it, you certainly will get it. So that’s how our angle, it’s like if we would create a story of biblical gospel for your pets and dogs and cats, this is what would be it The invisible tales. The sixth book, which is the, um, The Fish with No Tail. Oh my goodness, that one took me a long time, maybe six years to brainstorm. How do you tell stories of, you know, of Jonah, right? Of Jonah, this guy’s just stubborn. He doesn’t want to go to a city that he thinks that it doesn’t deserve God’s love and forgiveness and grace. And so what I did is how do you create Nineveh in our generation, right? So what I did is I pretty much create, I spin it around the Nineveh world, it’s the under the sea of this mermaid world that the whales and all the fish above the ocean absolutely hate. But because ocean was all toxic, it was so dirty. So this prince of this little mermaid, she’s dying. She’s the Ocean, uh, she is the, uh, ocean heart of the sea, if she dies, everything dies. So the whale recognized, “Oh my goodness if I don’t save this little princess– it’s not just about me, but these fish have some kind of like a prejudice towards a non-fish.” They call them non-fish cause they’re like mermaids, you know? So they’re not exactly fish, they don’t like each other. But the wife is the main character who eventually overcame this prejudice and just became, you know, loved his neighbor and went in there in this journey. And then, uh, he recognized that there’s something magical in his belly that could rescue the whole ocean’s crisis of this toxin. Yeah, so that’s, um, without giving away too much, I really want to just, you know, just take it if from a different angle. So instead of when mom telling Bible stories and here’s your kids like, “Mom, I know the ending to this,” right? And our goal is really taking their stories, allow children and parents to a new surprise, to a new adventure, but still has the same outcome, same theology, same, you know, adventure as they would be of the story of Jonah, but except ours comes to life because you’ve got these vivid visuals. So these picture books just really allow parents to revisit and to compare notes so that the kids can say, “Mommy, I want to really know the story of Jonah. You know, what really happened?” Oh, and I love that every time I write my book, The Giant Leaf, you know, kids read the story of Noah’s Ark when they go back there and they, they’re like, Oh mommy, why, why did- you know, “Why did the author put, you know, these monkeys down?” “Oh you could eat banana.” Oh yeah, that’s right. Jonah has to prepare one year’s worth of food. Oh, and how come that the animal go into the ark? They found their name. Oh, that’s because the author wants people to know that when they accepted Christ before they go to Heaven, their name is already written in Heaven. So these are all strong biblical theologies that we intentionally want to do to put it in there so that there is a hunger and there is this curiosity for children to learn more about what Jesus says about everything, of these things that happened from Genesis, all the way up to Book of Revelations.
Terrie:
I love that. When we first moved to Taiwan, we moved there in 1999 and my daily prayer was God give them a holy curiosity because the number of Christians in Taiwan at that time were less than 2%, which was even fewer than China’s percentage at the time. I just thought, man, you know this land needs Jesus. And so I just prayed, give them a holy curiosity and He answered that. I mean, people would come in off the street to go into our church and figure out “What is this building?” They were looking for the place to offer, you know, 拜拜 [bai-bai]. And they would come to our service and get saved and so, I just think that’s awesome to have books that will help spark that holy curiosity for God’s word and that hunger. That’s what I notice is, when you get a taste like the Jewish people used to talk about when they teach their children, they would put honey on the child’s tongue and talk about how the word of God is sweet like honey and it makes you want it more. And that’s what your books did for me. I think you see that spark that makes the children want to, like you said, read the real story and see the full picture. I just want to read one line from The Enchanted Tree, because this is what I’m talking about with how there’s such good theology in here. Toward the end where the two feeders have left the garden it says, and the platypus is talking and she says “The maker no longer walked with them as he did in the garden, but his voice never left them.” And there’s such redemption in that. And I just, that just really hit me. I just loved that cause that was always one of my favorite verses in Genesis is to see how and in the cool of the evening, this spirit of God would walk with Adam and Eve and talk with them and then, to lose that, how sad that would be. But his voice never left them even though he couldn’t walk with them in the gardens, I’m a big fan. I love these books. I think they do inspire such a hunger for God’s true word and reading the Bible and comparing the stories. I think it’s brilliant and I’m so thankful you came and shared with us today. Thank you too. I just pray that God continues to open doors for you and to bless this ministry. I hope that you’re able to make all those films you’re wanting to make and that you see your dreams realized.
Terrie:
Thank you for joining us for “Books That Spark,” a podcast, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions as we disciple our children and help them follow Christ with their whole hearts. If you would like to connect with Davy, you can reach him through his website, which is kendufilms.com and KenduKids.org as he mentioned in the interview because an art teacher told him he could do something and be somebody, it changed his life. And I love that. If we believe in our kids, God can use that to inspire them and to help them recognize who He’s created them to be and to give them an opportunity to use the gifts God has given them to be the people he’s created them to be. If you would like to connect with me, you can reach me at terriehellardbrown.com. I would love for you to join our mailing list. We offer you many free items when you join to just bless your family, to bless your kids, and we offer a legacy email, which means when you sign up for my mailing list for the first two months or so, you get one email a week that is a special blog post just for you to encourage you and to talk about your walk with God. What we do here at “Books That Spark” is mostly concentrating on how we can disciple our children, but you cannot give what you don’t have. And we have to remember, we’ve got to keep growing in the Lord as well, which we know and be reminded of those things that are so important in our walk with God. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and share, please help promote these books and this ministry that Davy has and help them if the Lord is leading, putting it on your heart, maybe you can be a part of helping them bring these films to the world so that the gospel can be shared even in places where the Bible is not welcome. It’s very exciting to see what God is doing. Thank you for being here today. I just want you to know we truly do appreciate.
Link to Video of The Giant Leaf
Your Host: Terrie Hellard-Brown
Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God’s purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children’s stories, and Christian education materials.
Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children’s books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Her podcast posts each Tuesday morning.
Her blog posts discuss living as a disciple of Christ while parenting our children. She challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to walk by faith in obedience to Christ and to use the nooks and crannies of our lives to disciple our children.
Terrie uses her experiences as a mother of four (three on “the spectrum”), 37 years in ministry (15 in Taiwan), and 32 years teaching to speak to the hearts of readers.
Her motto is “Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be WONDERFUL” and keeps her childlike joy by writing children’s stories, delighting over pink dolphins, and frequently laughing till it hurts.