The Joys of Reading Picture Books with an Eleven-Year-Old

   
Friends often ask me ques­tions about pic­ture books for old­er chil­dren, ques­tions like “Can they still read?”, “Is it suit­able?”, “What gen­res are suit­able?”, “How should they read?”, and so on. Faced with such ques­tions, I always feel awk­ward, as if some­one sud­den­ly asks if they like wear­ing skirts. How can I answer? — If they like, they wear them. If they don’t, they don’t! — What? Men can wear them, too? Of course, don’t Scot­tish and North Kore­an men wear them all the time? Don’t the male priests who light the Olympic flame also wear skirts? Maybe men’s skirts will be super pop­u­lar in the future! — Still embar­rassed? Well, then don’t wear them. There are so many ways to cov­er this stinky skin…
 
   
Pic­ture books are just a form of book, so why both­er with them? All roads lead to Rome…
 
   
The rea­son I choose pic­ture books is because of my inter­est, my lifestyle, and the way I com­mu­ni­cate with my chil­dren… In a word, it just hap­pens to be con­ve­nient for me.
 
   
For exam­ple, a few days ago a friend gave me aHar­ry the Dirty
DogFirst­ly, she knew I loved col­lect­ing clas­sic pic­ture books and would sure­ly trea­sure a copy like this. Sec­ond­ly, it was a sam­ple copy with a rich his­to­ry, cov­ered in a care­ful­ly designed plas­tic cov­er. It’s said that repeat­ed test­ing has shown that using it in pub­lic libraries can extend the lifes­pan of books by at least one-third, mak­ing it a valu­able ref­er­ence for my cur­rent research. A thought­ful gift, a cher­ished book con­nec­tion. I often say that the same book can become some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent depend­ing on how it’s con­nect­ed. This is prob­a­bly what I men­tioned ear­li­er about “inter­est, lifestyle, com­mu­ni­ca­tion style,” and so on.
 
   
The moment I got this book, I imme­di­ate­ly thought of a child who, because she’s grown up, “shall not be named.” She used to be a dog enthu­si­ast, and she still loves her lit­tle dog, Hen­ry (I don’t need to ask for his name). You see, Hen­ry and Har­ry are a bit sim­i­lar, aren’t they? So I decid­ed to bring this book to her and share it with her.
 
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    Har­ry
the Dirty DogWhat kind of pic­ture book is this? What age group is it suit­able for? The Tai­wanese ver­sion of this book is trans­lat­ed as “Good Dirty Har­ry”. The sim­pli­fied Chi­nese ver­sion of this book has not yet been pub­lished in main­land Chi­na. It is also trans­lat­ed as “Dirty Dog Har­ry” in gen­er­al intro­duc­tions. It was first pub­lished by Harper’s Com­pa­ny in the Unit­ed States in 1956. The author is Gene Zion.
Zion, by Mar­garet Bloy Gra­ham
Gra­ham, and was high­ly praised by Nao Mat­sui in his book “My The­o­ry of Pic­ture Books.” Peng Yi also specif­i­cal­ly rec­om­mend­ed this book in his book “Pic­ture Books: Read­ing and Clas­sics,” as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive work of dynam­ic Amer­i­can pic­ture books. The plot is very sim­ple, so I’ll bor­row the fol­low­ing syn­op­sis from Peng Yi’s book:
 
   
Har­ry is a white dog with black spots. He likes every­thing except tak­ing a bath.
   
One day, it heard the sound of a run­ning water in the bath­room and ran off with a brush in its mouth. It buried the brush in the back­yard and then slipped out­side. It ran to play where the road was being repaired, get­ting cov­ered in mud. It ran to play on the over­pass over the rail­road tracks, get­ting cov­ered in coal smoke. It played with a group of pup­pies, get­ting even dirt­i­er. It even slid down the slide on a coal truck, get­ting cov­ered in black.

   
Har­ry went from being a white dog with black spots to being a black dog with white spots.
   
When he returned home tired and hun­gry, his own­ers did­n’t rec­og­nize him. He tried to tell them he was Har­ry, per­form­ing hand­stands, aer­i­al spins, and even play­ing dead on the ground, but every­one shook their heads, say­ing, “Looks like Har­ry, but not Har­ry!” He dug out the brush, held it in his mouth, ran upstairs, and jumped into the bath­tub. The lit­tle girl and her broth­er gave him a bath, and haha, Har­ry was back to being a white dog with black spots.
 
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After read­ing the sto­ry sum­ma­ry, many adults would undoubt­ed­ly say, “Is this a book for two or three-year-olds?” If chil­dren over five still enjoy read­ing this kind of book, isn’t there some­thing wrong? — Is there real­ly a prob­lem? To be hon­est, there may be a prob­lem. If you live in a cul­ture where men don’t wear skirts and sud­den­ly see a grown man in a skirt, then it’s nat­u­ral­ly “prob­lem­at­ic.”
 
   
So, when I got a pic­ture book like “Dirty Dog Har­ry” and imme­di­ate­ly thought of read­ing it to an eleven-year-old (and let her read it her­self, for God’s sake!), with­out a sin­gle hes­i­ta­tion or shame, I was a bit sur­prised when I stepped back and looked at myself. I could only con­sole myself by say­ing, “It’s just my hob­bies, my lifestyle, and the way I com­mu­ni­cate with chil­dren…”
 
   
But what’s even more inter­est­ing is that from the time I put the book in my back­pack until I final­ly took it out to read it to my child, a full 15 days passed, cov­er­ing at least 4,600 kilo­me­ters. And dur­ing that time, both the child and the book were always by my side! Why did I have to wait so long and trav­el so far to read such a small book? Haha, I feel a lit­tle embar­rassed when I say this, because I real­ly just could­n’t find the right mood to read it!
 
   
Final­ly, on the night before bed after return­ing from my home­town in Guangzhou to my lit­tle nest in Bei­jing, I wait­ed for the per­fect moment of the ritual—after bid­ding farewell to the hec­tic hus­tle and bus­tle of the fes­tive sea­son and return­ing to my famil­iar home after a long jour­ney, it was as if I were “back to the night before depar­ture.” Hen­ry, the dog, who had been away for so long, lay con­tent­ed­ly at his lit­tle mas­ter’s feet. Could there be a bet­ter time to read “Dirty Har­ry”?
 
   
At that time, the old­er child was dili­gent­ly review­ing a copy of “Har­ry Pot­ter” in his hands. As was her cus­tom recent­ly, she would enjoy a read­ing of “Romance of the Three King­doms” by the sto­ry­teller Ajia before bed. How­ev­er, rou­tines often offer a dif­fer­ent kind of plea­sure when bro­ken. (I even think that plans, rules, and rou­tines exist for the plea­sure of break­ing them.) So, “Dirty Dog Har­ry” (Har­ry
the Dirty Dog) made a grand appear­ance!
 
   
Read­ing this book to a child took only sev­en or eight min­utes. It might have been even faster if it were a one-lan­guage read. How­ev­er, I had to read a sen­tence in Eng­lish first and then trans­late it into Chi­nese. The orig­i­nal Eng­lish ver­sion of the sto­ry is quite sim­ple and repet­i­tive, so by the time I fin­ished, I could under­stand many parts just by read­ing it once. In fact, as Mr. Nao Mat­sui said, this book is a prime exam­ple of sto­ry­telling through pic­tures. I believe that even if I did­n’t read the text, even my old­er chil­dren, who have been accus­tomed to read­ing these kinds of pic­ture books since child­hood, would have already under­stood the sto­ry!
 
   
So, I want to empha­size here that when I hold a so-called “chil­dren’s pic­ture book” like “Dirty Dog Har­ry” and read it to a child who can freely read “Har­ry Pot­ter” or “Dream of the Red Cham­ber” in its orig­i­nal form, it is actu­al­ly a rit­u­al! It is real­ly dri­ven by inter­est, lifestyle, and the way I com­mu­ni­cate with chil­dren…
   
We all feel par­tic­u­lar­ly intox­i­cat­ed in this rit­u­al O(∩_∩)O~
 
   
When I was about to close the book after read­ing to the end, the young read­er sud­den­ly said to me: “I knew Har­ry would find a way to tell them that he was Har­ry. I thought of a way on this page — (The fol­low­ing page shows the scene when Har­ry just returned from his “adven­ture”)
 
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Then she said, “But why did Har­ry hide the bath brush under his mat again in the end? I nev­er thought of that!”
 
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Have you ever thought about what it means when an eleven-year-old read­er asks such a ques­tion? In my opin­ion, she is read­ing the sto­ry from the per­spec­tive of the writer! At least in the sec­ond half of the sto­ry, she is no longer an ordi­nary read­er who only receives infor­ma­tion from the sto­ry, but to some extent par­tic­i­pates in the author’s writ­ing process. Her ques­tion can be inter­pret­ed as: “If I were the author, how would I tell this sto­ry?” This is a nor­mal reac­tion of an eleven-year-old read­er who has some sto­ry­telling or writ­ing expe­ri­ence. This kind of reac­tion is exact­ly what a grow­ing writer needs. (For details, please see my arti­cle “[Notes] How read­ing helps writ­ing”)
 
   
For those who are good at find­ing fun, it is not dif­fi­cult to find fun in one way or anoth­er, not to men­tion such an inter­est­ing thing as read­ing pic­ture books to chil­dren O(∩_∩)O Haha~
 
 
The A‑League was held in Bei­jing on Feb­ru­ary 19, 2010.