I believe that many parents have taken their children into the theater to watch the movie "Thirty Thousand Miles of Chang'an" in the summer of 2023. The film touches people's hearts not only with beautiful pictures and catchy Tang poems, but also with a unique narrative angle, which makes people shine.
The movie selects two extremely important poets during the period of the Tang Dynasty's transition from prosperity to decline - Li Bai and Gao Shi, and tells the history of the Tang Dynasty from prosperity to decline through the encounters of their lives.
The success of the film lies in the fact that history itself is driven by people, and from the perspective of people and people's stories, it is easier for children to understand historical events such as "Kaiyuan Prosperous Age" and "Anshi Rebellion", and they are deeply impressed.
"Comic Chinese History: Panda God of War" is a set of historical enlightenment books with a similar narrative angle to "Thirty Thousand Miles of Chang'an".
Starting from the dimension of "people", this series of books explains the history of ancient China for more than 2,000 years through the passionate lives and battles of more than 40 famous historical generals.
This series of books consists of 10 volumes, divided into three series, and this time the first series of 1-4 volumes is published.
The first series tells the history of more than 700 years from the late Spring and Autumn Period to the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the 16 gods of war such as Sun Wu, Lian Po, Xiang Yu, Han Xin, Huo Quzhi, etc., are all well-known and famous generals, and they are also important figures that cannot be ignored in the history classroom.
The author team of "Comic Chinese History: Panda God of War" has carefully studied the "curriculum objectives" in the "Junior High School History Curriculum Standards", and the history subject has certain requirements for children in three aspects: knowledge and ability (historical knowledge), process and method (accumulation of understanding), emotional attitude and values (excellent traditional culture).
Therefore, in the creative process, we also closely follow the "curriculum standards", and strive to help children lay a solid foundation for junior high school history learning!
Let's open "Comic Chinese History: Panda God of War" to see what problems it can solve for children to learn history.
Problem 1: Is it necessary to learn the history of thousands of years ago so far away from our lives?
Although the word "history" seems cold, it is because many children separate it from real life. If the experience and wisdom reflected in these historical stories are still applicable to life and learning today, children will be able to feel the importance of learning history.
For example, in the article "Using Soldiers Like Gods: Han Xin":
At the end of Qin, Xiang Yu, as the leader of the princes, had a great possibility of winning the world, and even Han Xin was once under his command.
But the proud Xiang Yu didn't look down on Han Xin's tactics at all, and Han Xin turned to Liu Bang.
But Liu Bang did not reuse Han Xin, but Xiao He discovered his talent and chased Han Xin back overnight.
Han Xin analyzed the situation in the world and Xiang Yu's three major weaknesses - unable to appoint meritocracy, reluctant to reward meritorious heroes, and losing the support of the people.
The plan to seize the Three Qins was decided, and the dispute between Chu and Han officially began.
Han Xin is like a soldier and a god handsome, first defeated Wei Wangbao with the strategy of "soldiers are not tired of cheating", and then captured the Dai State, and then used the strategy of fighting back and forth, and took the Zhao State in one fell swoop, while the Yan State was afraid of Han Xin and surrendered without waiting for the war to start.
The Han army was overwhelmed, and Liu Bang sent Han Xin to lead an army of 300,000 to launch a general attack on Xiang Yu.
The Chu army was besieged by the Han army on the Wujiang River. At this time, Han Xin wanted to break the military spirit of the Chu army, so he asked the soldiers to sing the Chu national anthem.
Sure enough, the Chu army was homesick and war-weary, and Xiang Yu, the overlord of Western Chu, died here.
But because of his high merits, Han Xin was suspected of rebellion, interrogation, and demotion...... Later, he really rebelled, but was tricked into the palace by Empress Lu and Xiao He to be killed...... Han Xin, who was unparalleled in the country, fell.
Through the concise and crisp narration of a few pages of comics, several stories such as "Xiao He Chasing Han Xin under the Moon", "Plotting to Capture the Three Qins", "The Last Battle" and "Embattled" and "Rabbit Dead Dog Cooking" are instantly understood, and you can also understand the history of the struggle between Chu and Han at the end of Qin and the beginning of the Western Han Dynasty through Han Xin's life.
I believe that after reading the story, the children will not only praise Han Xin's ability and wisdom, but also feel sorry for his ending.
Such a relaxing comic story is not much easier than reading a large text, and it can also trigger children's active thinking, understand historical events at the same time, and gain a wisdom for dealing with the world.
Problem 2: Time, place, and people! There are so many knowledge points, I can't remember them!
After all, every historical event is composed of time, place, people, and even meaning, historical lessons, etc., just about more than 2,000 years of ancient history, how much knowledge do you have to memorize?
"Comic Chinese History: Panda God of War" is based on the key points and difficulties of children's learning, and finds another way, by changing the life of famous generals in history, and stringing together the major events of this era.
The first series tells more than 40 battles of 16 gods of war, interspersed with more than 90 historical knowledge, more than 30 idioms and allusions, and more than 40 geographical knowledge, making it easy for children to become knowledgeable.
Each God of War has designed a timeline that shows his life and a card-like introduction to help children outline and understand the characters and this history.
Open the comics, children can first go through the ingenious chapter pages to get a general impression of the characters, and it will be easier to read the story.
More than 100 knowledge points are interspersed in the comics, so that children can not only accumulate various knowledge while reading, but also understand historical stories.
In addition to serious knowledge, the author has also designed "God of War Fun Facts" for each God of War, where you can see alternative trivia of God of War.
For example, why did Qin Shi Huang's ace god of war Wang Jian not participate in the war to destroy Korea? It turned out that Korea was weak and surrendered early, does the child have a deeper impression of the historical events of Qin's annihilation of the Six Kingdoms?
Reading comics to learn history, you can easily get more than 100 interesting knowledge, which perfectly solves the problem that children feel that history is boring and can't remember knowledge points.
Problem 3: The time span of historical events is large, the timeline is chaotic, and the mind is a mess
After studying junior high school history textbooks, the authors' team found that the current history is mainly based on thematic learning, and many historical events are told together, which makes it easy for children to confuse the timeline.
For example, the Battle of Guiling, the Battle of Maling, and the Battle of Changping in the first volume of the seventh grade all appeared in one place, but the specific events were not explained in detail.
And this set of books is based on history textbooks, sorting out the important historical nodes of each god of war, and then telling children in the form of comics, so that the natural time can be smoothed out and the events can be remembered.
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For example, the "Battle of Changping" was caused by the Zhao State and the Qin State fighting for the Shangdang County in Korea. The state of Qin sent Wang Yi to capture Shangdang County and directly approached Changping of Zhao.
At the beginning of the war, Lian Po, a veteran general of Zhao, led 200,000 Zhao troops to resist. Wang Yi was never able to completely break through Lian Po's defense.
At this time, the Qin State resorted to a counter-plot with the outside world, inducing the Zhao State to replace the main general with Zhao Kuo, who could only "talk on paper"; and secretly sent the "God of War" Bai Qi to Changping.
In the later stage of the war, as soon as Zhao Kuo took office, he broke Lian Po's strategy of "stubbornly defending", took the initiative to attack, and fell into the enemy's ambush.
As a result of the war, the Zhao army surrendered, 400,000 soldiers were killed, and the Zhao state was no longer able to compete with the Qin state for hegemony, which accelerated the process of the Qin state annexing the six countries.
The simple and clear comics and story explanations tell the famous "Battle of Changping" in history clearly, and the main characters, timeline, and development process are clear at a glance.
This form of presentation can easily help children solve problems such as confusion in the time of learning history, characters Zhang Guan Li Dai, and not being good at summarizing historical views.
Problem 4: There are too many historical data, and the quality is uneven, how to screen?
I believe that this is a concern of every parent, primary school is the initial stage for children to establish a correct view of history and values, so it is more important to show children authoritative, trustworthy and high-quality content.
"Comic Chinese History: Panda God of War" has designed three "strict checks" from form to graphics and text!
The first - casting, rigorous creation: at the beginning of the planning, from the vast ancient Chinese history, 24 historical "good image, good temperament" famous generals were selected, and after layers of discussion, 16 gods of war were screened, they are not only closely related to history textbooks, but also have many excellent qualities worthy of children to learn.
A list of the characters who were selected at the time of planning and why
The author referred to dozens of classics such as "Historical Records", "Warring States Policy", "Book of Han", "Book of the Later Han", "Zizhi Tongjian", etc., to ensure that the content is from the official history and conforms to historical facts.
Each God of War chapter page is marked with a reference to the article
The second stage is that the review is rigorous and serious: in the review stage, an editor with a Ph.D. background in history from the Chinese Academy of Sciences will be arranged to review the series of books.
In order to ensure that children aged 7+ can read without accessibility, we revise the stories and dialogues over and over again, and try to narrate complex historical events in the most simple and clear way possible.
Traces of changes marked by reviewers
In the process of book editing, the editors referred to a large number of authoritative materials, such as "General History of China", "Historical Atlas of China", "Ancient Chinese Carriages and Horse Harness", "Research on Ancient Chinese Costumes", "Ancient Chinese Military Costumes", etc., to ensure the correctness of the pictures and texts.
For example, when introducing the chariot, the final judge found that the chariot in the comic was not a "single car" belonging to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and also provided a correct reference map.
Even if it is a comic, the graphics and texts are in line with historical facts, rigorous and correct.
Reference diagram of the vehicle
The third - review recommendation of history professors: We also specially invited Associate Professor Shen Fuqiong, a doctor of history from Nankai University, to review professionally.
Mr. Shen checked a lot of professional history books, and strictly proofread the historical figures, timelines, weapons and items that appeared in the text to ensure the correctness and professionalism of the historical stories.
Professor Shen's professional proofreading and annotation
"Comics Chinese History: Panda God of War" is created by the team Dongman Society, which has published the highly acclaimed "Comics Great Language: Panda Writers Class", which took two years to create.
This set of books uses a unique God of War perspective and a light-hearted and humorous comic form to tell children that history learning is not boring, history can not be cold, and the Chinese wisdom contained in it can help children establish correct values and ways of thinking as soon as possible.
So, why not let these cute panda gods of war accompany them through a happy and fulfilling time?