"China Children's Audio-Visual Encyclopedia Flying to Space" opens a "skylight" for children

"Whenever night envelops the earth, the stars break into your and my sights. It seems to be close at hand, but far away. I don't know if the jade rabbit that pounded the medicine is still busy, and I don't know if the alien life is hovering in space. The seemingly empty heavens are full of enticing mysteries..."

Illustrated and exquisitely framed, "Chinese Children's Audio-Visual Encyclopedia Flying to Space" begins with academician Ouyang Ziyuan's poetic "To The Little Reader", introducing readers into a wonderful celestial world.

Yes, the vast starry sky and the mysterious universe have fascinated mankind for generations since ancient times. Poetic writers regard the starry sky as food for the eyes, and scientists with humanistic feelings regard astronomy as a harmonious science of vast space. In fact, since the fall of the Roman Empire, astronomy is arguably the only branch of all ancient disciplines that has survived intact, and it is also the most direct link between modern and ancient disciplines.

Sage has a saying: Seeing the heavens and knowing the universe is helpful to open up the heart. This is helpful for observing history and life until you read literature and think about philosophical questions. There is no universe in the heart, it is difficult to talk about life out of the circle of personal experience, and how to see the universe and how to see life are also interrelated.

"Chinese Children's Audiovisual Encyclopedia Flying to Space" wrote when introducing the ancient people's cosmology: Looking up at the starry sky, the ancients began to think and imagine very early: What is the structure of this universe? The stars rise in the east and set in the west. Is there any law to follow? In ancient China, famous theories including different hypotheses such as gaitian theory, hun tian theory, and Xuanye theory were derived; in the West, different theories such as the famous heliocentric theory and the geocentric theory were also born. Today, when science develops to this day, looking back at the previous doctrines, we will find many limitations; however, the ancients faced the mysterious nature and dared to explore and explain the spirit, but it is very worthy of our learning.

Look at that, the sun and the moon, the stars looming, the four seasons alternate, all the astronomical phenomena are both intricate and subtle. People look up at the stars, first with the naked eye, and then with the inner eyes of the spirit that explores the laws of the movement of the stars. The ancient Greeks even said that the upright posture of human beings is a unique feature of human beings because, unlike quadrupeds, they are not staring down at the earth, but they are able to gaze freely at the sky.

However, looking up at the stars, people see different worlds, have different feelings, and get different experiences. Some people plug in the wings of imagination, attach them to the myths that come to life, and then evolve into various legends and folk customs in the generations; others associate celestial bodies, stars and people's daily affairs with imaginary connections, develop celestial palace charts, astrology, and use this to serve political power and control others; still others summarize the laws related to agriculture and navigation based on years of observation and experience; and even further, through careful thinking and precise verification, summarize the laws followed by the operation of celestial bodies. Adding bricks to the grand edifice of constructing astronomy...

Human imagination and wisdom have created a "heaven" with ever-changing faces! "Chinese Children's Audiovisual Encyclopedia Flying to Space" brings together a lot of imagination, knowledge and wisdom, and also brilliantly presents a poetic and magical "heaven", as well as the extraordinary journey of mankind to the vast universe. It can be described as: a "skylight" looking forward to the boundless universe, a "book of heaven" holding hands with the unfathomable world.

Sometimes, the object of description or introduction of the topic of "Chinese Children's Audiovisual Encyclopedia Flying to Space" is the stars, but often it is not limited to this, but naturally extends from the stars themselves to the process of human understanding of stars and starry sky, clearly showing the long and magnificent main line of astronomy from naked-eye observation to telescope age to space exploration, thus presenting a quite distinct sense of historical depth and a very broad pluralistic perspective.

What is valuable is that in order to make the book close to Chinese young readers, the compilers have focused on China's "space dream" and China's space development knowledge content in the overall design of the framework, and designed theme pages such as the Long March rocket, the Dongfanghong No. 1 satellite, the Shenzhou spacecraft, the Tiangong-1, the elite of the Hundred Mile Pick one, and the China Lunar Exploration Project, and introduced in more detail the development process of China's manned spaceflight, the Chang'e Project, the artificial earth satellite and its applications.

The use of AR second-generation and two-dimensional code video technology, the organic chimera of new media technology and traditional publishing, is also a wonderful highlight of the book "Chinese Children's Audiovisual Encyclopedia Flying to Space". Scan with a smart phone, the 6 AR "augmented reality" 3D interactive scenes implanted in the book will jump out of the paper and fly in front of the children; the mobile phone scans the 30 "two-dimensional code videos" built into the book, and the wonderful space documentary film is immediately presented in front of the eyes, allowing young readers to get immersive feelings and the magical experience of three-dimensional interactive reading.

In the summer of 2009, when I was in a different place with the famous astronomer and popular science writer Bian Yulin to look up at the eclipse, I once discussed on the phone: Why are there no astronomy classes in primary and secondary schools? He believes that if there is a semester with one hour of astronomical electives per week during the "long" primary and secondary school years of more than a decade, it will be of great benefit to help children better understand the world and enhance their complete understanding of the main aspects of contemporary science. At present, the minimality of human exploration of the universe is a lack of education.

However, I think that until Mr. Bian Yulin's expectations are realized, it is a beneficial choice to let children use their spare time to carefully read the "Chinese Children's Audiovisual Encyclopedia : Flying into Space".

(Yin Chuanhong, Executive Deputy Secretary-General of China Association of Popular Science Writers, Editor-in-Chief of Science and Technology Digest Newspaper)