Picture Book "The Child Who Eats Books"
Although the "survival" of books has become more and more difficult to "survive" due to the intrusion of pirated copies, the oppression of discounts on sales platforms, and the encroachment of reading time by other "entertainment killers", when people talk about books, the beautiful imagination of their sustenance will not diminish at all.
So, have you ever thought about explaining to your child what a book is? And when some people resist the hustle and bustle of the day because they feel that it has ruined the quiet that reading should have, do you think about what is really reading?
In this regard, there are some insights in the children's books. In this issue we will introduce a set of picture books related to the book itself. Even many people who love to read may not know that books have a long production and production process, involving multiple links, which are interlinked and integrate the understanding of books by everyone who handles them, and you may not be able to "read" them. When many parents sanctify reading, and even think of finding a book to solve when they encounter parenting problems, they forget that books are actually "useless things", it is rich in a person's spiritual world, and the value brought by this richness is never reflected in the present.
How is a book made?
Whether it is an adult book or a children's book, from publication to listing, it must go through three major links: planning, marketing and sales. For readers, their direct participation is mainly in the sales process, that is, buying books from various sales platforms, and it is difficult to imagine how many processes must be experienced in the production process of books, and how many people in professional fields are needed to cooperate with each other, and even can be said to be mutually compromised. The good or bad of this grinding in often determines whether a book is likely to present its greatest strengths.
In this section we will introduce three books that represent the complex process of making a book from different perspectives.
How to Make a Book
[American] Aliqi / Author and painting Chen Huihui / Translation
Inspiring culture | Hebei Education Press, January 2014
Authors look for inspiration to complete their creations. Editors judge authors' manuscripts. Deciding to publish the book, the editor may also revise the author's original manuscript and contact the illustrator to draw an illustration for the book. The manuscript is complete, and after proofreading, printing is also the highlight...
Each small picture in the book is a step forward in the publishing process, detailing each process involved in the production of the book and the person in charge. Although some of the details are not the same as the current book production process, it is generally clear how a book is made.
"I Made a Book"
[French] Alain Searle/Author
Yang Xiaomei/Translation
Whimsical nation | Zhejiang Children's Publishing House, June 2017
The book is bound in accordion folds, divided into front and back. The flip side is the book's publishing process, which is somewhat similar to the previous book, but simpler.
The front is like a "book-making" craft class, dividing the process of making yourself "a book" into observing the world around you, letting it go, starting to draft, starting to prepare materials, folding and pasting, starting to make covers, starting to proofread and page numbering, starting to copy text, and starting to draw illustrations.
"Give it back to me, it's my book"
[Beauty] Travis Foster/Author
[American] Ethan Lang/Ewu/Translation
Bass | Beijing United Publishing Company October 2016
From the cover to the spine to the front and back, from the ring lining to the copyright page to the table of contents, each part of a book has its name, and the planning link of the book is the fine polishing of each part. This book borrows a small conflict to introduce young readers to the unique elements of a book.
Monster Little Red and Little Blue Rabbit competed for a green book, and they described many features of the book: the book had many, many pages, many words in the book, and chapters and illustrations, and just as they were arguing, Miss Earthworm took the green book and read it with relish. Monster Xiaohong and Rabbit Xiaolan turn enemies into friends and decide to make a book together to exchange for the book that Miss Earthworm took... And this process of making a book can be used in the method of "I made a book"...
The beauty of the book is that it is the entrance to another world
Opening a book opens up countless new worlds, and children need to know how wonderful the process is. Picture books seem to have this advantage naturally, and creators use illustrations to immerse children in the scene, making the charm of the book more intuitive.
Of the three books introduced in this section, the "bad wolf" in the first book became a "good wolf" because of reading. In the second book, the children who do not like to read fall in love with reading because of the adventure of immersing themselves in books. In the third book, a child born in the touch screen era sees a strange book and has many strange problems, but he will still fall in love with books.
Don't Go! Say it again! 》
[f] Benedict Carbonaj/
[b] Michael De Lulieu / Illustrated by Yang Di / Translation
Dandelion | Guizhou People's Publishing House, March 2022
"Who woke me up during a nap?" The wolf roared loudly. It turned out to be a father reading to his daughter. Usually, wolves will bite them, but... This time is different. The nice story attracted him. Now, Dad stopped and closed the book. "No, I must hear the end of the story!" However, the wolf did not know how to read, and he decided to find a small animal to help. All the animals were very vigilant, except for a small rabbit. The rabbit talked, the magic happened, the wolf was completely attracted to the story, and even gently helped the rabbit turn the book...
"Book to Bruno"
[de] Nicholas Heidelbach / Author , Illustrated by Illustrated / Translation
Magic is like | Guangxi Normal University Press, March 2016
Every time Bruno passed by Ulla's house, he always wanted to play with Ulado for a while. Ulla, who likes to read, wants to read with Bruno, but Bruno finds it meaningless. It wasn't until one day that Ulla showed Bruno where he had been bitten by a snake on his neck that Bruno became really curious. Ulla tells Bruno that the snake ran out of the book, and that the book was a book with magic...
Bruno was completely captivated, and after opening the book and turning the first page, they found that the ladder in the picture looked like the real thing, and suddenly, the two fell into the world of the book by the bookmark line. Together, they wrestle with dragons, cross the vast sea, explore the enchanted forest... It turns out that this is the experience of reading.
"This is a book"
[United States] Ryan Smith / Author , Illustrated by Chen Kehui, translated
Macmillan | 21st Century Press, September 2017
The donkey who lives in the digital age, who only knows the computer and the internet world, does not know what the book is, so he looks curiously at the book in the monkey's hand and asks the monkey a series of questions from the position of the computer user, "Does this book have a mouse?" "How does it scroll down?" "Can it text?" ...... In the end, the donkey took the book from the monkey's hand, although he complained that there were too many words, he unconsciously indulged in the story and forgot the passage of time...
How can I freely enter and leave the world of books?
Not all books related to reading are full of praise. If the purpose of reading is only to turn it into a flaunting of a certain identity, into a kind of ostentation, into scorn for others, into the pursuit of the quantity of reading and ignore the quality, such reading is completely deviated from the meaning of the book's existence.
The three books introduced in this section are about the meaning and method of reading. Although they may seem a little preachy, the alert they give is still timely and necessary.
"Silly Goose Pidunee"
[United States] Roger Duffersin / Author , Illustrated by Jiang Jiayu / Translation
Friendship | Tomorrow Press, September 2008
Silly Goose Pidunee was wandering on the grass when she suddenly found a book, and she remembered that Bill's father had said, "He who has books and loves books has wisdom." Piduni wanted other animals to respect her, so she walked around with books under her wings, and the illiterate wanted to show off her intellectual "talents", which resulted in many jokes. Finally, she reflected on the misfortune she had caused: "It does not work to just put wisdom under the wings, but to put the book in the head." ”
"The Child Who Eats Books"
[English] Oliver Jeffs / by Yang Lingling / Translation
Relay Press, May 2014
Henry was an incredible boy who loved to eat books, he could eat letters, he could eat sentences, and he could eat whole books. He can eat any type of book, dictionaries, atlases, joke collections, life knowledge books... What knowledge he learns by eating what books, Henry becomes more and more intelligent.
But then things didn't get too good, Henry ate too much too fast, all the knowledge mixed up in his head, he even made it difficult to speak, and the doctor advised him not to eat any more books. By chance, he picked up a book that he had eaten halfway and found that reading slowly felt much better than eating a book stick...
"Traveling to the Sea of Books and Playing Childhood: 1001 Activities for Children to Fall in Love with Reading"
[b] Philip Brasser / translated by Wang Jia
Dandelion | Guizhou People's Publishing House, June 2017
The title of this book is plain, but it is a practical tool to help parents discover the fun of books and master the reading methods.
The book introduces many activities to stimulate children's interest in reading, including arranging a warm reading environment, carefully sorting out books, loving books, discovering children's small preferences for reading, how to be a child's point reading machine, how to ask children questions, how to listen to children's ideas, how to play book solitaire games with children, etc. And remind parents to respect their children's rights as readers, and not to do things that are easy for children to lose interest in reading.