[Guide] April Argentine Primera División guest on Voice of Literature and Art weekend interview to talk about children’s reading

   
April cel­e­brates two major fes­ti­vals for read­ers: Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Book Day (April 2nd) and World Book Day (April 23rd). In keep­ing with the book­wor­m’s spir­it of min­gling, I accept­ed the invi­ta­tion of Chi­na Nation­al Radio’s Voice of Lit­er­a­ture and Art to par­tic­i­pate in four week­end talk shows this month: on Sun­day evenings, April 5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th, between 8:00 and 8:30 PM. Host Li Jia and I chat­ted about a wide range of top­ics, start­ing with the ori­gins of the two read­ing fes­ti­vals and dis­cussing inter­est­ing chil­dren’s books (because the show had just aired “Edward’s Amaz­ing Jour­ney,” DiCamil­lo’s works were fea­tured heav­i­ly). Then, we moved on to fre­quent­ly dis­cussed top­ics relat­ed to chil­dren’s read­ing, such as how to choose books for chil­dren, how to read with chil­dren, and how to become con­nois­seurs of chil­dren’s books togeth­er.
 
   
The bed­time sto­ry sec­tion is becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar, and the show has been extend­ed from half an hour to an hour, adding a half-hour of pro­gram­ming for old­er chil­dren. Recent­ly, they’ve aired “The Wind in the Wil­lows,” “Anne of Green Gables,” and “The Wiz­ard of Oz.” They’re cur­rent­ly air­ing “The Ant with the Cor­ner of His Shirt” (anoth­er pop­u­lar sci­ence fairy tale from the author of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s still dif­fi­cult for lis­ten­ers out­side of Bei­jing to hear it direct­ly on the radio, but if you pre­fer, there are ways to lis­ten online:
 
   
Vis­it the web­site:http://media.cnr.cn/
   
Click “Voice of Lit­er­a­ture and Art,” then find “Bed­time Sto­ries” to lis­ten. If you find a pat­tern, you can even lis­ten to pro­grams from a year ago. Recent pro­grams, such as those from April 5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th, are easy to find. How­ev­er, the web­site is cur­rent­ly using new tech­nol­o­gy, mak­ing direct down­loads dif­fi­cult.
 
   
I have tran­scribed four inter­view record­ings. If you are inter­est­ed, you can click on the fol­low­ing link to lis­ten to them. Some of the con­ver­sa­tions are quite inter­est­ing. :)
    Record­ing of the inter­view pro­gram of the Argen­tine Primera División on April 5
    Record­ing of the inter­view pro­gram of the Argen­tine Primera División on April 12
    Record­ing of the inter­view pro­gram of the Argen­tine Primera División on April 19
    Record­ing of the inter­view pro­gram of the Argen­tine Primera División on April 26