In the famous picture book "Guess How Much I Love You", the little rabbit and the big rabbit seriously compare who loves more, they use the length of the open arm, the height of the arm desperately lifted up, etc., to express the "weight" of their love is very much, so much that they surpass each other. Many children love this book, not only because it conveys warmth, but also because when the abstract concept of "love" is visualized by imagination, it becomes easy to understand, which we can call "love conversion".
Because preschoolers are still figurative thinking, using familiar things to convert to help them understand abstract concepts, which is a more common creative method in the picture book industry, it can be said that almost every children's book brand has published such books. Although some books always want to be linked to the knowledge of mathematics, physics and other disciplines, differences and similarities are indeed everywhere, and we also distinguish things through differences and similarities.
Similarity is like a shadow of difference, two things are similar, distinguished by their differences from the third party; two things are different because one of them is similar to the third party. The same is true of individuals. There is a difference between a short man and a tall man, but if they are compared to a woman, they are similar again. Children's books also often compare or swap positions between humans and animals to create interesting differences and let children understand the existence of relativity.
The following is a list of children's book themes in this issue.
"How Long Is a Second", by Steve Jenkins, translated by Li Yiran, love tree | Nova Press, July 2018.
Parents' favorite words to say to their children are probably "Hurry up!" Hurry up! And the most common response words for children are probably "Right now!" Right away! "So, how fast is it? How long is it now? Perhaps before reaching an agreement, we need to first unify the concept of time.
This book is about the "seconds," a unit of time invented entirely by humans to make it easier for themselves to measure the smallest amount of time. Then from a second to a minute to an hour to an hour all the way through the years, defining that time in terms of what living beings do in those times. For example, in one second, bats can emit 200 ultrasounds; in one minute, people can walk 91 meters briskly; in an hour, baby blue whales that eat mother's milk gain nearly 4.5 kilograms; in a week, ladybugs swallow at least 500 aphids... This completes the explanation of the concept of the length of time.
The Book of Classifications, by Neil Parker, translated by Jian Zhang, Relay Press, December 2020.
Classification is one of the ways we understand the world, and this book brings together similar things and distinguishes them from other things, both similar and different, like an encyclopedia's table of contents. If the previous book, "How Long Is a Second", is a simple concept that extends from a simple concept to a complex concept, then this "Book of Classification" is to simplify the complexity and present the order in daily life in the form of illustrations.
There are 13 categories of things in the book. They are genealogy, animal kingdom, musical instruments, vehicles, toolboxes, types of clouds, architecture, apples, books, art, cheese, time maps, and DNA. Of course, how to classify is according to the author's thinking, in fact, everything, everyone can also have their own classification, just like children must also learn to classify their own toys.
"Around: How Big is Big, How Far Is It", by Little Gestalten Studio, translated by Cen Jun, translated by Song Yushan, wave flowers and flowers, | Tianjin People's Publishing House, August 2021.
Look up, look down, look around again. There are some things that are small over here, and some things that are tall over there. The tiniest thing floats in the air, and what rises from the ground and stands tall is one of the oldest things in the world. However, how big is huge, how small is small, how slow is slow, how much is a lot? Perhaps by using oneself as a reference, one can measure everything.
The book starts from everything related to "you", your teeth, eyeballs, height, body temperature, age, etc., and uses their comparison with animals to introduce abstract concepts such as size, distance, weight, and speed. For example, people will have 32 teeth, but armadillos have more than 80 teeth, great white sharks have 300 teeth; open your arms, the wider the better, then the maximum length you can stretch out now is the same as your height, but some animals are not like this...
"The Little World Under the Eyelids", by [Tu] Gekche Ilten, translated by Zhao Lingxuan, little mammoth | Publishing House of Electronics Industry, September 2021.
Caterpillars grow very quickly, but if this speed is replaced by the growth rate of your foot, then the foot will grow too long to squeeze into the school bus; ants can easily lift objects that are more than 50 times their weight, but what if ants are as big as people? The author painted an ant all over a page-spanning piece of paper, and people could not hold such a large ant.
True size and sensory size are very different in cognition, and it depends on who you are. A chicken is nothing to a human being, but to an ant it is a behemoth, and we all live in a large world that contains countless small worlds.
"The Great Universe Above the Sky", by [Tu] Gekche Ilten, translated by Zhao Lingxuan, little mammoth | Publishing House of Electronics Industry, September 2021.
This book is the work of the same author as "The Little World Under the Eyes", which takes the reader to expand the horizon beyond the earth and convert the characteristics of the planets in the solar system into common things around them.
Uranus is particularly cold, it is known as the "ice giant", the painter painted Uranus as a blue ice cream; Venus is rotating in the opposite direction, the painter painted a group of fish in the opposite direction of the swimming fish...
Maybe we think the Earth is big and big, but compared to the entire solar system, we are all small.
"Is it a pig not a pig", [Han] Li Shunyu wrote/painted, inspiring | Hebei Education Press, July 2021.
The book has fewer words, the author's pictures are very similar to visual games, by changing the scene where the two pigs are located, to teach children to understand the common concepts of large and small, deep and shallow, inside and outside, fat and thin, suitable for low and young babies.
There is a special page-turning design in the book, with questions and answers, and some questions do not necessarily have only one answer.
The Tallest Tower and the Smallest Star, by Kate Baker, illustrated by Zou Junsheng, translated by Chen Yufei, and | by Zhi gakuen CITIC Publishing Group, April 2021.
This book has a very grand perspective, spanning hundreds of millions of years, in the astronomical, historical, geographical, architectural, animal and plant worlds, the largest and smallest things, ancient and modern differences in a map for comparison, condensed knowledge points are probably the most in this list of books.
Interesting Measurements, by [West] Miria Truss, [West] Oscar Gurf, translated by Wang Liya, Big Dipper Children's Book | Dolphin Press, July 2020.
The book has more obvious mathematical concepts. On the right side of each page is a mathematical unit, meters, square centimeters, kilograms, etc., and the picture depicts the scenes of daily life that these units can correspond to. They also appear more often in applied problems in elementary school mathematics.
For example, 1 button on a shirt, 1 button on a laptop keyboard, 1 nail cap, and the iris on an eye, they are about 1 square centimeter. Through this presentation, young readers are allowed to relate more things to abstract mathematical concepts.
"Cool Worm", by Sharon Weiner, [Beauty] Sarah Floss, translated by Zhao Chang, Heart Joy Reading | Changjiang Children's Publishing House, October 2021.
This is a picture book of popular science bugs, cockroaches, spiders, mosquitoes... Not limited to insects, but insects that are easily seen on a daily basis. Each bug doesn't look scary at all, because they're spelled out in numbers, and the introduction to each bug is also strung together with numbers. It is suitable for children who already have a knowledge of the size of the number, and recognize the difference between bugs by comparing mathematics.
The book introduces a total of 23 species of bugs and their interesting knowledge, and also shows the magical skills of these little bugs with contrast and humor.
The inscription is from the picture book "The Little World Under the Eyes" produced by the little mammoth.
Edit | Shen Chan, Luo Dong
Proofreading | Lucy