A Very Chinese Summer Recommendation (Children’s Books)

Illus­tra­tions for Peking Opera Cats: Chang­ban­po

Illus­tra­tion of Paper Horse
 
 
 Late­ly, friends have been ask­ing me to rec­om­mend sum­mer read­ing for their chil­dren. After care­ful­ly con­sid­er­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions, I’ve dis­cov­ered that most of them are import­ed works, which is a bit dis­ap­point­ing and frus­trat­ing. So, I’ve set myself an assign­ment:Select some very Chi­nese and inter­est­ing books to rec­om­mend to chil­dren. Below is my com­plet­ed home­work.
 

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Baby Hap­py Nurs­ery Rhymes (Ge Cuilin Nurs­ery Rhyme Pic­ture Book)

This large-for­mat book fea­tures nurs­ery rhymes writ­ten by renowned chil­dren’s author Ge Cuilin and metic­u­lous­ly illus­trat­ed by chil­dren’s illus­tra­tor Wu Jinglu. The rhymes are writ­ten in gen­tle, melo­di­ous lan­guage, and the images are tran­quil and beau­ti­ful. The illus­tra­tions are tra­di­tion­al, rem­i­nis­cent of a famil­iar child­hood. Suit­able for chil­dren aged 1–4.

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Chi­nese Fables and Pic­ture Sto­ries (6 Vol­umes) (Chi­nese Clas­sics Enlight­en­ment, Pho­net­ic Nota­tion Edi­tion)

This is actu­al­ly a reprint of a set of illus­trat­ed sto­ry­books based on ancient Chi­nese fables, metic­u­lous­ly craft­ed by the Shang­hai Juve­nile and Chil­dren’s Pub­lish­ing House. Pre­vi­ous­ly, there was a hard­cov­er edi­tion. It col­lects and adapts 30 famous ancient fables, fea­tur­ing illus­tra­tions by renowned illus­tra­tors such as He Youzhi, Dai Dun­bang, Ma Rujin, Wu Jian­hua, Yu Li, Wang Xiaom­ing, and Miao Wei. It has a dis­tinct­ly Chi­nese fla­vor and is well worth col­lect­ing for its illus­tra­tions alone.

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Leg­ends of the Eight Immor­tals Series (9 Vol­umes) (Yang Yongqing’s Tra­di­tion­al Sto­ry Pic­ture Book, Pho­net­ic Nota­tion Edi­tion)

Almost every­one has heard of the “Eight Immor­tals,” but few­er and few­er can reel off their names, and even few­er can recount their ori­gins and mag­i­cal sto­ries. Over­all, while this series of books is intend­ed for chil­dren, it’s also well-suit­ed for adults. The author, an old farmer, appears to be a researcher, and the sto­ries are well-orga­nized, though not over­ly vivid, but cer­tain­ly reli­able. The illus­tra­tions in this series are absolute­ly top-notch, cre­at­ed by Mr. Yang Yongqing, whose illus­tra­tions for “Ma Liang: The Mag­ic Brush” are per­haps more famil­iar. They main­tain the same tra­di­tion­al style, cre­at­ing a tru­ly authen­tic and engag­ing expe­ri­ence.

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Chi­nese Idiom Sto­ries (60 pic­ture books)

High­ly rec­om­mend­ed! I read and was cap­ti­vat­ed by it as a child, and I’ve nev­er for­got­ten it. The com­ic strips of Chi­nese idiom sto­ries pub­lished by Shang­hai Peo­ple’s Fine Arts Pub­lish­ing House are so enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive. I rent­ed them from street ven­dors as a kid and nev­er read them all. Now, wow, there are 60 books, over 500 idiom sto­ries, all wrapped in a blue box—what a lux­u­ry! The new edi­tion also includes a help­ful guide, like a search tool, allow­ing you to search by pinyin and strokes. Amaz­ing! The whole set is like a minia­ture idiom dic­tio­nary in com­ic book form. Kids today are tru­ly blessed, but they might not expe­ri­ence this…

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The Muse­um of Great Chi­nese Clas­sic Sto­ries (6 vol­umes) (Chi­nese and Eng­lish)

The Chi­nese nation com­pris­es 56 eth­nic groups, each with count­less sto­ries to tell, each rich and col­or­ful. This so-called “muse­um” of books only cap­tures a small por­tion, with each eth­nic group offer­ing just one sto­ry (two for the Han), but tak­en togeth­er, the col­lec­tion is quite impres­sive. This icon­ic series, metic­u­lous­ly craft­ed sev­en or eight years ago by Tomor­row Pub­lish­ing House, involved the par­tic­i­pa­tion of numer­ous Chi­nese artists, mak­ing it a high­ly col­lectible illus­trat­ed sto­ry­book.

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56 vol­umes of illus­trat­ed Chi­nese folk tales

This is a tru­ly spec­tac­u­lar col­lec­tion of folk sto­ry pic­ture books, fea­tur­ing a book for each eth­nic group. The large for­mat and beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions show­case the sto­ries and cus­toms of each eth­nic group, cre­at­ing a seam­less, one-piece scroll. Amaz­ing­ly, these books were pub­lished between 1990 and 1992, yet their qual­i­ty remains remark­ably high today! Mr. Ma Yongjie, the chief plan­ner of this series, cur­rent­ly over­sees the main­land pub­lish­ing efforts of Xinyi Pic­ture Books. He is tru­ly a wor­thy pub­lish­er.

When we redis­cov­ered this set of books, we could describe our feel­ings as ecsta­t­ic. Dr. Wang Lin even wrote an enthu­si­as­tic book review for it.Unre­peat­able splen­dor》.

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Pic­ture Book Chi­na Series 7 Vol­umes

This is a set of authen­tic and orig­i­nal Chi­nese pic­ture books launched by Tomor­row Pub­lish­ing House on the occa­sion of the New Year of 2008. From sto­ries, lan­guage to paint­ing styles, it strives very hard to show the con­no­ta­tion of pure Chi­nese cul­tur­al fla­vor, so the name of the series “Pic­ture Book Chi­na” is quite appro­pri­ate.

Those famil­iar with the work of illus­tra­tor Xiong Liang will know that many of the works in this series are actu­al­ly old works, some of which were pub­lished sev­er­al years ago in Tai­wan, across the Tai­wan Strait, and have been quite pop­u­lar with readers—after all, there are so few pic­ture books that are “very Chi­nese.” How­ev­er, per­haps at this stage, the author’s empha­sis on high­light­ing Chi­nese cul­ture is too strong, and the inter­est of the sto­ries them­selves (espe­cial­ly for chil­dren) is a lit­tle pale.

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6‑volume Chi­nese Pic­ture Book Series

Let me let you in on the fact that I sug­gest­ed the title “Sen­ti­men­tal Chi­na” for this series. I chose “sense” because sev­er­al of the books are about singing, and some are even singable (like “Su Wu Shep­herd­ing Sheep”). I chose “emo­tion” because this is the illus­tra­tion style that Mr. Xiong Liang par­tic­u­lar­ly val­ues: mov­ing peo­ple with emo­tion.

Com­pared to the old­er works in “Pic­ture Book Chi­na,” this series, with its authen­ti­cal­ly Chi­nese fla­vor, has made sig­nif­i­cant strides in mak­ing the sto­ries engag­ing. For exam­ple, the sto­ries in “Peking Opera Cats” are so cap­ti­vat­ing that they’ll make chil­dren laugh out loud (which isn’t always easy). “Lotus Returns” is per­haps the most child­like work, both in its illus­tra­tions and its sto­ry; and “My Lit­tle Pony” is arguably Mr. Xiong Liang’s mas­ter­piece, ful­ly show­cas­ing the artist’s indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and artis­tic pur­suits.

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Illus­trat­ed Chi­nese Clas­sics (12 vol­umes) (Pho­net­ic Anno­ta­tion Edi­tion)

I gen­er­al­ly don’t rec­om­mend rewrites of clas­sics, as it’s dif­fi­cult to do well; it’s bet­ter to read the orig­i­nals direct­ly. I rec­om­mend this series pri­mar­i­ly for its illus­tra­tions. The illus­tra­tions, cre­at­ed by the Qiy­ibao Chil­dren’s Book Stu­dio, are by broth­ers Xiong Lei and Xiong Liang. They main­tain their dis­tinc­tive Xiong style, striv­ing to blend tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese cul­tur­al sym­bols with chil­dren’s inter­ests. While there may be moments of suc­cess and oth­ers of less­er acclaim, it’s at least a com­mend­able attempt. While every read­er has their own pref­er­ences and choic­es regard­ing illus­tra­tion style, I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the “Clas­sic of Moun­tains and Seas” and “Liaozhai” (Strange Sto­ries from a Chi­nese Stu­dio) in this series.

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Chi­nese Wis­dom Mas­ters Series 8 Vol­umes (Com­ic Edi­tion)

This series of books is a set of fun pock­et com­ic books. It is based on the thoughts of great Chi­nese thinkers such as Con­fu­cius, Men­cius, and Zhuangzi dur­ing the Spring and Autumn Peri­od and the War­ring States Peri­od, and inter­prets their immor­tal wis­dom over thou­sands of years in the form of light-heart­ed comics.

Using comics to illus­trate clas­sic Chi­nese cul­ture is noth­ing new; Tai­wan’s Cai Zhizhong’s comics are prob­a­bly clas­sics of this kind. In com­par­i­son, Xin­lei Pub­lish­ing’s main­land-orig­i­nat­ed mini-com­ic books are a bit sim­pler, more suit­able for younger chil­dren, and more engag­ing.

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A Good Friend is Com­ing (Select­ed Chil­dren’s Songs by Li Jin­hui, with CD)

This book is a very spe­cial edi­tion, fea­tur­ing a col­lec­tion of very old chil­dren’s songs by a near­ly for­got­ten musi­cian. The accom­pa­ny­ing CD also includes record­ings of equal­ly old ver­sions of these songs. Mr. Li Jin­hui, once revered as the “Father of Chi­nese Chil­dren’s Musi­cal,” cre­at­ed chil­dren’s songs (pri­mar­i­ly from the 1920s) that have long been wide­ly sung, becom­ing “cen­tu­ry-old clas­sics” of chil­dren’s music. Per­haps the most famous of these is “Poor Qiux­i­ang,” a favorite of mine. Inter­est­ing­ly, despite its age, his songs still sound so famil­iar.

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Read­ing Series 8 (Pho­net­ic Pho­net­ic Ver­sion of the Chi­nese Chil­dren’s Ency­clo­pe­dia)

Ency­clo­pe­dia of Chi­na Press is a pro­fes­sion­al pub­lish­ing house that spe­cial­izes in pub­lish­ing the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Chi­na. It can be said that it has gath­ered the most pro­fes­sion­al resources in this field in Chi­na.

This “Read Before School” series is a set of ency­clo­pe­dia read­ers spe­cial­ly pre­pared by the Ency­clo­pe­dia Pub­lish­ing House for chil­dren who are prepar­ing to go to school and those in the low­er grades of ele­men­tary school. It is very prac­ti­cal, fun, and has very Chi­nese char­ac­ter­is­tics.