Uncle Kai Water Margin: A simple edition of a masterpiece suitable for children

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01 Book analysis

As one of the four famous works in China, "Water Margin" is a novel written by Shi Nai'an in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. Some people also say that the author of this novel is Luo Guanzhong, and some people hold the view that both people are the authors of this novel.

The book depicts the story of a group of good men of Liangshan who rebelled against oppression, Shuipo Liangshan, and later accepted the Song court Zhao'an, and after Zhao'an fought for the imperial court, and eventually withered away.

This novel is the first zhanghui novel written in vernacular chinese in Chinese history, and the image of the good man of Liangshan portrayed in the book has a distinct personality and is impressive.

As an epic work in the history of Chinese literature, it is not simple to read. I remember watching it at the time, and I really had the feeling of looking at the back and forgetting the front, because there were so many characters in the book. However, this book is one of the must-read books for primary and secondary school students, so the book "Uncle Kai Water Margin" appeared to solve this problem.

The author of this book is Uncle Kai, and I believe that everyone is familiar with this name, because we have all read the article of the public account "Uncle Kai Tells Stories". Uncle Kai also founded the Uncle Kai Storytelling APP loved by more than 50 million children, and the stories told by Uncle Kai include classical masterpieces, classics of Traditional Chinese Studies, popular science encyclopedias, fantasy adventures, etc.

On the question of whether this "Water Margin" needs to be read, many parents can't make up their minds. Read it, because it is a designated reading material for the new curriculum standards of primary and secondary schools, the method of portraying characters in it is worth learning, and the way of describing the scene is also different. Don't read it, because there are too many pictures of good people fighting and killing in Liangshan, and there are some more explicit plots, afraid of affecting the children's values.

Therefore, Uncle Kai specially adapted the story in "Water Margin" and wrote a children's literature suitable for children. How is this series of books different from the original?

According to Uncle Kai's preface, it is mainly placed in two aspects:

First, the content of the bloody violence and superstition of ghosts and gods in the original books is simplified, and the images of women with positive energy are highlighted;

Second, the overall character image, the storyline is more full than the original book. For children or elementary school students in the lower grades, stories are always the most curious.

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02 What famous books to read

So for "Water Margin", we advocate reading, what exactly is it to read? Uncle Kai said: Reading the "literary nature" of this famous book.

What is "literary"? Uncle Kai said that one is "beauty", the second is "logic", and the third is "human nature".

Children read, they can not extract useful information from a book, so this requires the guidance of adults. The emergence of children's books is to extract the book content that children of this age need from the classics, and when they are very young, first give them a popularization. In the future life, if you have an interest in this area, you can read the famous works carefully and read them deeply.

The so-called "beauty" is probably that we learn the image beauty of the characters in the book through words, in fact, we also learn how to depict a character more three-dimensionally. We will all find that when children are in kindergarten or the lower grades of primary school, their ability to repeat is very good. So we tell them the classic story in a language they can understand, and they take the image of a character to heart by listening to the story.

Children with more literacy in this set of books can read it themselves, and parents or teachers of students with less literacy can take it to read, and there is no special restriction on how to use this set of books.

Regarding "logic", it is actually teaching children how to tell a story well. Why is the story so good? It is because of this up-and-down, layer after layer of relationship, tightly grasping the child's heart. For example, in the book "Wuthering Jingyang Gang", the protagonist of this book is Wu Song, which tells about Wu Song's experience before going to Liangshan.

Among them, the story that most interests children should be "Wusong Fighting Tiger". The process of fighting the tiger, from the very beginning of curiosity, challenge, drinking, Kamoka, fighting the tiger with bare hands, interlocking, I believe that children who listen to stories will be very interested in this process. The focus is on whether the storyteller can help the child pull this logical line out and immerse the child in it.

Finally, comes the purpose of storytelling. Why should we tell stories to our children? Why do we publish specialized children's books? Because behind every story there is his educational significance, that is, the so-called "human nature", a question of right and wrong.

In the process of storytelling, it is actually cultivating children's outlook on life, values, and worldview. Through stories, infiltrate the truth of being a person, and cultivate children's moral concepts.

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03 Plant the seeds of beauty in your child's heart

We can tell the truth through stories and teach our children how to behave in the world. This is actually to plant a beautiful seed in the child's heart.

For example, when we talk about "Wusong fighting tigers", we see that Wusong is not afraid of difficulties, dares to challenge, and finally eliminates this scourge for the people. This is actually telling the child to be a good person, a good person who has himself in his heart and others.

For example, when we talk about the story of "Wu Song avenges his brother", the focus of the story is not "revenge", but his brotherly love with his brother. When telling this story in this book, a lot of the text portrayal is placed on Wu Song's nostalgia for his brother. This is actually telling the child that brothers and sisters should love each other.

For example, when we talk about wu song's depravity for the people but being imprisoned, the focus is not on how miserable Wu Song is, but on how Wu Song faced these problems in the face of many unfairness in life.

All of this adds up, although the words are small, but after a long time, the child can understand the meaning behind this.

In childhood, our main task is to guide, we can't ask children to read a book and write an essay to analyze it. So storytelling is a good way to do it.

Because, in fact, we are planting a seed in the child's heart, a seed that can see the light. At some point in the future, the seed will slowly sprout and grow.

Therefore, this series of books is suitable for children to understand the famous books. Maybe one day in the future, a child will become more interested in the original work because of one of the stories, so as to conduct more in-depth research on it.