Evokes childhood memories of generations

Author: Chang Li, Associate Professor, Zhejiang Normal University

I believe that reading with children is one of the most romantic and amazing things in the world. I also believe that reading connects the world, our past, present, and future. However, at first glance, the "100 Classic Books of Chinese Children's Picture Books in 100 Years" seems to create a sense of distance - no matter who, by what criteria, impartially select the 100 most representative picture book works in the past 100 years, is this possible?

Mr. Nao Matsui once summarized the narrative rules of picture books into a formula: picture × text. Yan Liying and I expanded this formula into a book called "Picture Book Narrative Discourse Research" to: Picture × text × book design. In this way, it is convenient to exclude the works created a long time ago, although deeply interactive but lacking book form, outside the scope of picture book research, and the editors of this classic book series have given such works the form of books (although the sense of design can be further strengthened) and included them in the study of modern picture books.

As I flipped through the eight picture books selected in the first series, I gradually thought of a group of shell collectors who bent down on the beach day after day to collect shells, and then put them in the dimension of time and space to review. "Look, this is the treasure we found", and when they showed us these treasures, I felt the surprise of love. There are certainly precious shells in the sand, and these in front of me are at least equally precious, partly because of the beauty from the inside out, and partly because the textures and details on their bodies reveal the marks of time.

The first publication of these eight books, in the twenties and thirties, fifties and sixties, and eighties and nineties of the last century, put them together like the childhood of generations marching. Although the childhood in the book comes from the past, it is very determined to carry the energy to the future.

Zheng Zhenduo's Hippo Kindergarten, created in 1922, is regarded as the embryo of Chinese children's literature, and although the story is old, the spirit is extremely modern. Chinese children's literature rarely finds children of the century as free, happy and powerful as Pippi longstocking, but the small animals in "Hippo Kindergarten" are somewhat godlike, and it is pleasant to read these stories, and you can feel the author's love and encouragement for children's nature. The children of Hippo Kindergarten can go to the river to fish, swim, and play freely without listening to the teacher; they can run to their classmates to see the painters brush the walls with a roar; they can get out of bed at night and light candles to play; they can change the direction of the signs so that the teacher can't find them... In the competition with the teacher, it is always the child who wins, the win in the smart and dexterity, the dare to think and dare to do, and the win in the teacher's sincere love for the child. So the child wins, but the teacher doesn't lose. The love between the hippo teacher and the small animals adds a moving undertone to these playful stories. There is nothing more joy to childhood than this.

The prototype of "The Turnip Is Back" is a true story that took place in the environment of the lack of materials to resist the United States and aid Korea. Food shortages caused by heavy snowy days make mutual aid and sharing among small animals particularly textured. "The little white rabbit eats one and leaves one behind. It thought: 'The snow is so big, the weather is so cold.' The little donkey must have nothing to eat at home, so give it this radish to eat. This sentence pattern repeats throughout the text, conveying the temperature of friendship in a difficult life. Today, we are still cultivating the habit of sharing in children, but children rarely experience true deprivation, and this story may make them understand that the true meaning of sharing is not what you end up getting, but that you are willing to give even if you are stuck.

For me, "Ma Liang" is a reunion after 30 years. We are a generation that grew up reading Jin Yong and watching Hong Kong films, and most of the popular literature and popular culture masterpieces at that time stood on the position of having no money and no power. Looking back, when I was a child, I was only surprised by the god of the divine pen, but now when I look at it again, I can see the things that shaped our spiritual world - "I don't believe that poor children can't even learn to paint" "I want to paint exclusively for our poor"; I can also see the social ideal personality of "minwu compatriots, things and also" in Zhang Zai's touching "Ximing", and even the belief and interpretation of the artistic spirit expressed by the French writer Yousenaer in the novel "The Way of the King Buddha's Life". Wang Fo disappeared into the sea he painted to escape the disaster, and Ma Liang also painted the sea, in order to let the corrupt officials go to the sea to move the golden mountain, so that the sea breeze and waves overturned the big ship. The artistic conception is different, and the stereotypical consciousness is similar: the creative way art solves problems will eventually help us get through the difficulties of life.

"Little Goat and Little Tiger" now seems to ask many questions: Didn't the little goat and the little tiger have a good time on the first day? Did Mother Tiger and Mother Sheep destroy the friendship of the children? Isn't a group of big goats dealing with a small tiger bullying the small with the big and the many? After we've been touched by the transcendent friendship between wolves and sheep in Emerald Forest, and after the heartbeat of the interaction between rabbits and foxes in Zootopia, what are we going to think about the conflict between the goat and the little tiger? I know, of course, that we need to understand the historical nature of morality—in the 1950s, when this work was produced, the little goat and the little tiger could not be friends, and even now, the antagonism and estrangement have not disappeared. But Xiang Hua's rewriting of the story of "The Wolf Is Coming" ("The Wolf Is Coming, The Man Is Coming") can still give a useful lesson to the retelling of "The Little Goat and the Little Tiger": Is there possible an ideal, naïve, childlike, playful world in which goats and tigers can play together, and we do not judge the good and evil of a life because it is a sheep or a tiger?

"Nezha Noisy Sea" creates a refreshing image of Nezha in the trend of overturning the sea, white and fat water spirit, handsome and lively, and joyful. The painter Yu Dawu drew Nezha from the traditional crafts of New Year paintings, golden locks, hanging ornaments, dyeing cloth paper-cutting and other traditional crafts such as "Grinding and Drinking Music", which is both ancient and fresh, not only implicitly linking the plot of resurrection through lotus roots, but also echoing the identity of Nezha's protector. When the author describes his design ideas, he also mentions that "through the scattered perspective of traditional murals, the picture scroll can be displayed more magnificently, and at the same time, the brushwork of the brushwork can make details such as waves, clouds, mountain stone buildings and other details outlined perfectly, and at the same time, the traditional mural combined with the heavy color of the brush can also make the traditional atmosphere more intense", and the painter's brush power gives the story a new look and spirit.

"Pear Violin", how can a pear be made into a violin? The painted violin doesn't even have a resonance cavity. But ah, it is so beautiful, so beautiful that it is like a colorful dream, and you can't help but believe it. The pear violin played the music, and the fox listened, and did not chase the chicken; the lion listened, did not chase the rabbit. I believe that art has the power to connect the world, and in this world there is not only our past, present, and future, but also dreams that we can share with each other. Just like at the end of the story, the pear core that fell from the pear violin grew into a pear tree, so that every animal had a pear violin.

Let's go to the world of dreams, let's make dreams for children, and do these romantic and amazing things together. The so-called "dream bubble" sounds like a decadent, but as long as I am not the only dreamer, as long as one day, you will join us, the dream will be strong, the tunnel is bright. (Standing)