Picture Book Gameplay Cross Secrets V1.0 Beta

    
【Ten-fold For­mu­la】
   
Sing, recite, speak, act, draw, per­form, eat, break, chat, and think.
 
   
【Spe­cial Note】
   
Each word in the Cross For­mu­la rep­re­sents a type of game­play. They are just some com­mon ones and do not cov­er all. In addi­tion, it does not mean that every book is suit­able for all kinds of game­play, nor does it mean that every­one is suit­able for all kinds of game­play. They are more like an inspir­ing exam­ple. Every­one can use the appro­pri­ate book and adopt the appro­pri­ate game­play accord­ing to their own strengths. In addi­tion, these game­plays are not designed specif­i­cal­ly for chil­dren. Adults can play with them if they want. Real good “mud” is loved by both adults and chil­dren.
 
   
【Detailed Expla­na­tion of the Cross For­mu­la】
   
(1) Speak­ing
   
1. Sing: Some pic­ture books can be sung, or they them­selves have lyrics or con­tain lyrics, such as Su Wu Shep­herd­ing Sheep, Five Lit­tle
Ducks, We’re Going on a Bear
Hunt (“We Go Bear Hunt­ing”); to be more broad, we should include nurs­ery rhymes, such as “A Gar­den of Veg­eta­bles Became a Spir­it” and “The Mouse Gets a Bride”; or the sto­ry in the book comes from a song, such as “Joseph Has an Old Coat”, or a poem that can be chant­ed, such as “Dawn”; or the folk tale itself has a famil­iar song, such as “Pulling the Car­rot” and “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood”; and even more amaz­ing is that when the sto­ry­teller is in the mood, he will impro­vise a tune based on the text of the pic­ture book and sing it. For exam­ple, I have heard the sto­ry­teller sing “The Miss­ing Piece”, which is great.
 
   
2. Read­ing: With the excep­tion of word­less books, almost any pic­ture book can be read. Hav­ing the audi­ence look at the pic­tures while the sto­ry­teller reads the words (read­ing aloud or read­ing aloud) is the sim­plest and most effec­tive way to engage with the sto­ry. Some­times, we find some books dif­fi­cult to read. The rea­sons are: ① We’re not ready; ② The text in the pic­ture book is sim­ply not good (not suit­able for read­ing); ③ Or, they sim­ply don’t fit the audi­ence.
   
Almost every­one who can read can read, so peo­ple often under­es­ti­mate this “read­ing” method. How­ev­er, in my opin­ion, it’s the most advanced of all the ways to play with pic­ture books (I inten­tion­al­ly omit­ted “one of”). A true mas­ter should be able to read right away, act­ing as a spe­cial lis­ten­er, observ­ing the pic­tures and lis­ten­ing to the sounds (their own) along­side oth­ers, enter­ing the authen­tic world of the pic­ture book sto­ry. This requires dili­gent study, dili­gent read­ing, and con­tem­pla­tion, and, of course, a gen­uine love for the book.
 
   
3. Speak­ing: Some pic­ture books require dis­cus­sion, such as word­less books. But there are many oth­er pic­ture books that deserve dis­cus­sion beyond just read­ing. For exam­ple, books like “Su Wu Shep­herd­ing Sheep” and “Peking Opera Cats” are dif­fi­cult for lis­ten­ers to under­stand with­out some dis­cus­sion, as the cul­tur­al con­text is inevitably unfa­mil­iar to young lis­ten­ers. Oth­er sto­ry­tellers are high­ly skilled, and they might need to include a punch­line or a splen­did musi­cal flour­ish dur­ing their sto­ry­telling, which is also fine. How­ev­er, in these cas­es, the pic­ture book in hand is mere­ly a sup­port­ing medi­um. If the pic­ture book is the main char­ac­ter, the sto­ry­teller needs to some­what sup­press their tal­ent and be more restrained.
   
The “telling” here is dif­fer­ent from “chat­ting”. It main­ly refers to telling sto­ries apart from the text of the pic­ture book, while “chat­ting” means talk­ing beyond the sto­ry.
 
   
(2) Hands-on
   
4. Do: This mnemon­ic word “do” encom­pass­es a wide range of activ­i­ties, encom­pass­ing any­thing that requires hands-on inter­ac­tion rather than draw­ing, act­ing, or eat­ing. This includes crafts, games, exer­cise, and so on. While it may seem like a way to enter­tain a pic­ture book, engag­ing in this activ­i­ty can also be ben­e­fi­cial to under­stand­ing the book. For exam­ple, after read­ing “The Flower Granny,” you might plant flow­ers; after read­ing “Pulling the Radish,” you might play tug-of-war; after read­ing “The Lit­tle Black Fish,” you might play music games; after read­ing “A Gar­den of Green Veg­eta­bles Becomes a Spir­it,” you might stroll the veg­etable gar­den or form groups to play war games. Many sto­ry­tellers, espe­cial­ly teach­ers, have been quite cre­ative in this area, such as Teacher Fang Suzhen’s hand­made books, which are tru­ly excep­tion­al. Appro­pri­ate­ly applied, read­ing can trans­form into a tru­ly engag­ing game.
 
   
5. Paint­ings: Excel­lent pic­ture books are like art gal­leries on paper, allow­ing read­ers to not only appre­ci­ate mas­ter­pieces from a wide range of styles and cul­tur­al back­grounds but also nat­u­ral­ly inspire some to take up their own brush­es. How­ev­er, it’s impor­tant to under­stand that the images in pic­ture books are pri­mar­i­ly used to con­vey sto­ries and emo­tions. There­fore, for young read­ers, the most inspir­ing cre­ative impuls­es are often not those that adults con­sid­er ornate, but rather sim­ple, unpre­ten­tious, and straight­for­ward works, such as “Miffy,” “Rain­bow Flow­ers,” “Hap­py Birth­day, Moon!”, “The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar,” “The Very Hun­gry Snake,” and “Plaid Ele­phant.”
 
   
6. Act­ing: Pic­ture books with char­ac­ters are gen­er­al­ly playable. The sim­plest way to act out the sto­ry is to read it aloud in dif­fer­ent roles, such as “Croc­o­dile is Afraid of the Den­tist” and “The Giv­ing Tree.” How­ev­er, it’s even more fun to add props. The recent­ly released “Pigsy and the Big Bad Wolf” includes masks for act­ing out, which is quite thought­ful. How­ev­er, if read­ers are will­ing to put in a lit­tle effort and incor­po­rate the “do” prin­ci­ple, they can also make their own inter­est­ing masks or pup­pets to act out the sto­ry.
   
A bit of advice from expe­ri­ence: if you are in kinder­garten or school, it is suit­able to choose sto­ries with many char­ac­ters and vivid images, such as “The Gruffa­lo”, “The Bre­men Musi­cians”, “I Choose Myself”, “Who Pulled on My Head”, and “Duck on a Bicy­cle”. Occa­sion­al­ly, you can also choose sto­ries with few­er char­ac­ters, but it is best to take turns to per­form, such as “True Friends”.
 
   
7. Eat­ing: This is the most cre­ative activ­i­ty, as there are plen­ty of pic­ture books about food, but few actu­al­ly teach you how to eat. You’ll need to come up with your own ideas. For exam­ple, after read­ing “Green Eggs and Ham,” you might just want to try mak­ing a dish. Or “Cloud Bread”—bread is easy, clouds are hard to come by! You can also try “Stone Soup” or “Angry Soup.” And after read­ing “Zi’er, Tutu,” try using papaya or water­mel­on. Some pic­ture books even have recipes, like “Apple Pan­cakes” from “Passy the Rab­bit,” and the recent­ly released “Mrs. Mof­frey’s Mon­ster,” which has a cake recipe. The recipes in “Gul­ley and Gula” are pret­ty much fairy­tale recipes.
 
   
(3) Brain Train­ing
   
8. Deci­pher­ing: This seem­ing­ly most tech­ni­cal approach is suit­able for read­ers who enjoy tech­ni­cal and detec­tive games. “Deci­pher­ing” means crack­ing or solv­ing a mys­tery. Some pic­ture books tru­ly require deci­pher­ing to be enjoy­able, such as Antho­ny Browne’s works, which are almost all rich­ly detailed. With­out deci­pher­ing works like “Goril­la,” “My Father,” and “Voic­es,” the fun would be great­ly dimin­ished. The pur­pose of deci­pher­ing a pic­ture book is pri­mar­i­ly to uncov­er the sto­ry hid­den beneath the sur­face, not to devel­op diver­gent or extend­ed asso­ci­a­tions. For exam­ple, con­sid­er the sto­ry of the tiger cart and the frog in Janosz’s “Hel­lo, Lit­tle Pig!”, the sto­ry of the ant wear­ing a hat in “The Ant and the Water­mel­on,” and the sto­ry of the mouse fam­i­ly in “Grand­pa Will Find a Way.” There are also deep­er sto­ries, such as the more metaphor­i­cal ones in “In the For­est.” Peng Yi’s “Pic­ture Books: Read­ing and Clas­sics” focus­es on the joy of deci­pher­ing pic­ture books.
   
Study­ing pic­ture books requires a spir­it of “break­ing”. The most per­sis­tent per­son in this regard is Pro­fes­sor Nord­man of Cana­da. He once wrote a poem for the first page of the book “Going on a Riv­er with Uncle Gam” (which read “This
is Mr.
Gumpy” (lit­er­al­ly “This is Mr. Gumpy”, trans­lat­ed into Chi­nese as “He is Uncle Gump”). David Lewis from the UK is also quite capa­ble, hav­ing writ­ten an 11-page essay on “Oops, Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood”. And there is Jane Dunant, whose book “See­ing the Pic­tures in Pic­ture Books” main­ly ana­lyzes two books: “The Lamb Could Not Sleep” and “A Cloudy Day”.
   
How­ev­er, I think it is nec­es­sary to remind you that although “break­ing” is very pro­fes­sion­al and fun, it can also lead to “obses­sion”, so be care­ful!
 
   
9. Chat: This seems like the eas­i­est way to engage in con­ver­sa­tion, and it’s actu­al­ly the most com­mon method used in dai­ly life. Of course, it’s often not used effec­tive­ly. For exam­ple, even though it’s a very inter­est­ing sto­ry, it’s tempt­ing to chase the child with ques­tions like: How many goats, wolves, piglets, and hunters are there in the sto­ry? What clothes did the wolves wear? What did the goats say? What did the hunters do? And what moral does this sto­ry teach us? … This kind of con­ver­sa­tion is worse than not engag­ing in con­ver­sa­tion at all. There­fore, Tai­wan’s “Lit­tle Big Read­ing Club” specif­i­cal­ly advo­cates “read­ing the words when there are words, and qui­et­ly flip­ping through the book when there are no words.” This is prob­a­bly intend­ed to pre­vent this kind of bor­ing book talk.
   
How to talk about books with chil­dren? This is a pro­found sub­ject. Cham­bers once wrote a book specif­i­cal­ly titled “Talk About It,” the Chi­nese ver­sion of which is includ­ed in “Cre­at­ing a Read­ing Envi­ron­ment for Chil­dren.” How­ev­er, even if you’ve read the book, it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean you’re ready to start a con­ver­sa­tion. More impor­tant­ly, we need to be gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in the book, just as inter­est­ed as the child. If you haven’t done your home­work and aren’t gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed, it’s best not to dis­cuss it. Of course, if you tem­porar­i­ly set aside the idea of “what moral this book is sup­posed to teach the child,” there’s noth­ing wrong with casu­al con­ver­sa­tion. For exam­ple, if you read a book about wolves, you could talk about a sto­ry about a wolf that plagued your home­town in the moun­tains as a child… This might be a bit exag­ger­at­ed, but the point is to make the con­ver­sa­tion inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant to your own life.
 
   
10. Think: Asso­ci­at­ing, imag­in­ing, let­ting your imag­i­na­tion run wild… This is the most per­son­al way to play. Once, dur­ing a dis­cus­sion about a book read­ing activ­i­ty (obvi­ous­ly, no chil­dren were present), the top­ic some­how came up: “Lit­tle Mouse’s Vest.” A friend who stud­ies phi­los­o­phy excit­ed­ly said, “This book is about Lao Tzu’s phi­los­o­phy: accept­ing what­ev­er hap­pens, isn’t it?” Every­one was stunned at the time, but on reflec­tion, it made sense. Some might ask, “Can chil­dren under­stand this?” I would counter with, “Do adults real­ly under­stand this?” In the realm of thought and imag­i­na­tion, if we don’t use adults as the stan­dard, adults don’t have much advan­tage over chil­dren.
   
Allow enough time and space for the “ideas” of the pic­ture book, and don’t set lim­its on the ter­ri­to­ry. This kind of play has end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties.