"Divine Beast Academy" book cover Publishers courtesy of the publisher
Beijing, April 26 (China News Network) (Reporter Ying Ni) Qinglong, White Tiger, Suzaku, Xuanwu, Rabbit Grandpa... If these traditional cultural beasts sit in the classroom like primary school students, attend classes, take exams, and write homework, will they also be like the "little god beasts" at home, sometimes staring at homework and scratching their ears and scratching their cheeks, and sometimes frowning at the exam papers?
The well-known children's literature writer Huang Jiajia's "Divine Beast Academy" series of works has a series of imaginations about this - the green dragon who goes to heaven and earth turns into a crying bag when he looks at the math problem, the suzaku who loves to dress always step on the class bell to enter the school door, and the weasel transforms into the primary school bully who loves to raise his hand and speak in the classroom. This group of living treasure divine beasts broke the stereotype of Chinese sacred beasts, and each one was intelligent, cute and energetic, like the appearance of primary school students in daily life, which made people feel kind and familiar.
In the book, "Immortal Teacher" and cultural locations allow children to see pictures and learn scenes. For example, the Wenqu star in myths and legends is an amiable old principal in the story; the director of moral education is the king of the stove, who says good things in heaven and goes down to the earth to ensure peace. In addition, young readers can also see in the story how the weaver girl without Queqiao spends Tanabata, has a relay race with her father every day, learns arithmetic with Fuxi and Nuwa, and plays with Sun Wukong as a "sleepy bug".
Inner page of the Divine Beast Academy Courtesy of the publisher
Li Hao, editor-in-chief of the book, introduced that in addition to humorous and vivid fantasy stories, "Divine Beast Academy" also integrates the knowledge of Guozijian, Confucius Temple, Summer Palace, Zhongyuan Festival and so on, so that children can understand the different charm of history at close range. The protagonist of the book, Zhou Youyou, travels to the North Sea with his classmates of divine beasts, visits Jingshan Mountain, eats popsicles in the Summer Palace, watches the moon at Lugou Bridge, and posts microblogs to help the wheezing dogs in the "Dog Temple". Give readers a feeling of being friends with the characters in the book, and easily step into the "high threshold" of traditional cultural knowledge enlightenment.
All along, in the process of parent-child co-reading, children's enthusiasm for reading is very high, and the amount of literacy is also quite large, but when selecting books, most of them take the number of pictures in the book as the standard, and lack of interest in books with large text. This phenomenon is also present in many lower primary school students, scratching their heads in the transition from "reading pictures" to "reading texts". The Divine Beast Academy solves this problem better. The book has up to 120 creative illustrations, combined with the image form of multi-grid comics, the image is intuitive, exercising the ability of reading, speaking and writing that students in the lower grades of primary school must master, so that children can easily achieve the advanced level of reading and writing.
It is reported that the second series of "Divine Beast Academy" is being created, and will continue the creative style of the first series, starting from folklore, architecture, food, festivals and other aspects, integrating real life Chinese hotspots, so that young readers can systematically reserve the knowledge of traditional culture in the mainland while reading happily, and guide children to fall in love with reading and fall in love with traditional culture with a long history. The author, Huang Jiajia, has published the "Oracle School" series of historical knowledge children's literature, and has won the Top Ten Children's Literature of the National Bookstore Selection for All Reading. (End)