Idiom-Magic

For more than twenty-five years, the writer-illustrator team of John and Ching Yee Smithback have been explaining idioms and proverbs to the world with more than fifty published books and a daily newspaper column that has appeared throughout Asia and Europe. Meeting in Hong Kong while John was teaching English and Ching Yee was studying nursing, their initial books — entitled ©IDIOM-MAGIC and published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong — met with such immediate success that it quickly changed the course of their lives. Shortly thereafter, they created a daily newspaper column designed to explain English idioms to their readers in Asia. Aimed principally at students who were learning English as a Second Language, it wasn’t long before the Idiom-Magic column was of interest to nearly everyone — including native speakers — curious to know more about these odd and sometimes curious constructions within our language. John and Ching Yee estimate that they have illustrated and defined close to 8,000 English idioms, proverbs, catch-phrases and slang terms, in the course of which they have also produced several books defining and explaining Chinese idioms for English speakers. Describing themselves as “literary gypsies” they have lived in various countries — Hong Kong, Portugal, Singapore and France — while producing their column and books. For a number of years they lived in England close to Shakespeare’s birthplace at Stratford-upon-Avon, and they are now living in the USA.