A dad asked me
Isn't it nice to read so many warm and sweet stories to your child? After all, real life is full of visible flaws, contradictions and conflicts. Should we also help our children prepare?
This is a very reasonable thinking. I would like to explore this issue in two picture books.
Look at you, make such a mess here!
Who wants to get, this is the name of a picture book. Children who read the title of this book will not be shocked and want to look back to see if their mother has quietly walked in.
Along with this sentence, which is familiar to almost all children, an interesting story unfolds -
The President yelled at the Minister,
The minister shouted to his wife,
The wife reprimands the child,
What about the children,
After cleaning up your house,
Turn around to criticize a tramp who is resting leisurely.
Although it is a picture book story, I guess that after reading this book with children, most adults will be moved in their hearts and thoughtful.
This seems to be an allegory about "class", and the humble picture reflects the "kicking cat effect" of the adult world.
Kicking the cat effect
Objects that are weaker than themselves, or who are lower in class than themselves, vent their dissatisfaction and thus have a chain reaction. Bad emotions are transmitted from high to low along the chain of social relations, and the weakest become the ultimate victims.
But the story doesn't seem to be meant to be "satire" or "criticism." It raises questions and provides solutions to them, it presents contradictions and skillfully bridges them.
The feeling of reading this story is very similar to eating a "show candy" that I especially liked when I was a child, the entrance is stimulating and sour, but the aftertaste is round and mellow sweetness.
This book is a self-written and self-drawn work by Taiwanese picture book writer Liu Xugong. According to the information found on the Internet, Liu Xugong was originally a graduate of National Taiwan University majoring in civil engineering and only began to learn picture book creation in his 30s. Starting from learning handmade picture books, step by step you become a full-time picture book writer.
Although he started late but achieved remarkable results, his works have won awards such as the Xinyi Children's Literature Award, the Feng Zikai Children's Picture Book Award, and were selected for the International Children's Book Illustration Exhibition in Bologna, Italy.
The several works I have read by Liu Xugong have a unique temperament: both sharp and thick. It is both straightforward and reveals complex connotations. It seems to be a fable, but it is wrapped in a fairytale-like dreamy atmosphere.
Read another book --
A rich man who lived in a large house with a lot of chimneys.
The black smoke coming out of the chimney choked the rich man and coughed.
He came up with an idea—to pull the chimney to a place where the poor lived in the distance, and to give money and reasoning, so that the poor people accepted the chimney.
Liu Xugong's ability to tell stories is very strong, such a topic related to society, environmental protection and politics, in his pen like a brilliant detective novel as fascinating. Children will follow this kind and relaxed style into the story, crack the conspiracy of the rich and advise the poor.
And every adult who reads this story will inevitably have mixed feelings in their hearts - such a story is not a fairy tale, it is really happening in the world we live in.
With "Look at you, make such a mess here!" Likewise, the book is not aimed at criticism, but is full of warmth. People with different experiences, different needs, and different classes can calmly understand each other and build a home together.
Are you saying that this is making up a fairy tale or sowing hope?
A parent once asked me:
When should we let our children know that the world we live in is not as beautiful as the fairy tale world.
When is it time to pull a child out of the perfect ivory tower into the real world?
I think that Liu Xugong's books give us a good idea -
Let the child see, take the child to think, but at the same time, also give the child gentle care.
In this way, it may be possible for children to enter the real world step by step, not blindly, nor afraid.