The joy of telling stories to children with Mimi (with animation)

   
Telling sto­ries to chil­dren through pic­ture books, in my opin­ion, is a relay-style col­lab­o­ra­tion: the author and illus­tra­tor com­plete the sto­ry, the edi­tor and pub­lish­er cre­ate the book, and then the sto­ry­teller takes the book and works with the lis­ten­ers to cre­ate a won­der­ful sto­ry. A good sto­ry­teller knows how to enjoy the won­der­ful plea­sure of full coop­er­a­tion.



   
I recent­ly went to a kinder­garten for a sto­ry­time. I was sur­prised to find 108 chil­dren, from all ages, sit­ting in a giant semi­cir­cle. Their par­ents formed an even larg­er semi­cir­cle in the back! When I first arrived, I was a bit bewil­dered. With so many chil­dren, young and old, how could I tell a sto­ry? My first thought was to use the Mimi pic­ture books. Of course, Mimi can be a life­saver in a sit­u­a­tion like this!

   
Mimi is an orig­i­nal pic­ture book series that has become incred­i­bly pop­u­lar in Tai­wan in recent years. The copy­rights have been sold to over a dozen coun­tries, and the series has recent­ly been pub­lished in main­land Chi­na. I’ve shared the Mimi sto­ry with edi­tors, par­ents, and old­er chil­dren. Inter­est­ing­ly, this seem­ing­ly child­ish series (most peo­ple might think it’s only suit­able for infants and tod­dlers) can actu­al­ly make fourth-graders burst into laugh­ter, so I’m quite con­fi­dent in Mimi.



   
The sto­ry­telling ses­sion that day was­n’t suit­able for pro­jec­tion, so I held up the book and began: “The book’s name is ‘Mimi Says No,’ writ­ten by Zhou Yifen and illus­trat­ed by Chen Zhiyuan.” What do the words ‘wen’ and ‘tu’ mean here? A boy jumped in, say­ing, “I know. ‘wen’ means to hit a mos­qui­to!” After a burst of laugh­ter, every­one final­ly under­stood what the author and the artist meant.

   
I asked, “Do you want to meet the author of this book?” The chil­dren shout­ed, “Yes—!”

   
I said: “Then let’s all shout out the author’s name.” Every­one shout­ed togeth­er: Zhou Yifen——!

   
A mir­a­cle hap­pened. The author actu­al­ly walked up to the chil­dren as they were shout­ing! Wow—the chil­dren were so excit­ed. They could actu­al­ly call out the author while read­ing. Such a mag­i­cal thing does­n’t hap­pen every day.

   
Okay, let’s con­tin­ue the sto­ry. Look, what kind of ani­mal is Mimi? (I walked around half a cir­cle, hold­ing the book.) The chil­dren were talk­ing about it all at once. Some said it was a mole, some said it was a pup­py, and some said it did­n’t look like any­thing at all… I said, accord­ing to the artist him­self, this is a com­plete­ly new under­ground ani­mal. Let’s call her a mole. Look, Mom­my just gave Mimi a bath and dried her off. The sto­ry begins:

   
Mom­my helps you get dressed, okay? — No! I can dress myself! — (Mimi dress­es, final­ly)



   
Mom­my will help you pour the milk, okay? —No! I will pour the milk myself! —(Mimi pours the milk, final­ly)

   
This is a book that needs to be turned slow­ly, page by page. Every time they hear Mimi yell “No,” the chil­dren are so excit­ed they want to yell it too. And when they see Mimi fum­bling with her clothes or knock­ing over a milk car­ton, they burst into laugh­ter. All I do is read and turn the pages slow­ly, try­ing to ensure the chil­dren see the images as much as pos­si­ble. For­tu­nate­ly, Mim­i’s images are large enough, and the sto­ry’s devel­op­ment does­n’t rely on the details in the images.

   
When I read the third rep­e­ti­tion of the sen­tence “Mom will dri­ve you to the slide, okay?”, most of the chil­dren were already able to guess what was com­ing next. They rushed to run up and said, “No! I can do it myself…” By the time I saw Mimi slid­ing down and falling, some chil­dren had already slipped off the stool and rolled on the ground.

   
But at the end, when I read, “Mom­my real­ly wants to hold Mimi!” I asked Mimi what she would say. The chil­dren shout­ed “No!” But then I hes­i­tat­ed. What should I say? Should I say, “I don’t want Mom­my to hold me?” After think­ing for a while, one lit­tle boy shout­ed, “I’ll hold Mimi by myself!” and then pre­tend­ed to hold him­self.

   
I turned to the next page: “I hug my moth­er by myself!” Then I turned to the last page, which showed a heart­warm­ing scene of a moth­er and daugh­ter hug­ging. All the chil­dren and adults could­n’t help but applaud.

   
Strike while the iron is hot, I then told anoth­er sto­ry, “Mimi Loves to Imi­tate.” It was equal­ly humor­ous, heart­warm­ing, and incred­i­bly fun. The chil­dren grew increas­ing­ly excit­ed, even rush­ing over to grab the book and the micro­phone! They seemed to love Mimi to death. I said, “Okay, kids, let’s play a game of imi­ta­tion and see who can act out Mim­i’s sto­ry best.”

   
Amidst the sea of raised hands, I sin­gled out a qui­et girl in the back cor­ner. She lis­tened atten­tive­ly through­out the sto­ry and raised her hand with­out hes­i­ta­tion, so I con­clud­ed she must have mem­o­rized every line. When I asked her moth­er to take the stage, she was even more excit­ed than the child. We sim­ply rehearsed the lines on stage, and the moth­er and daugh­ter re-enact­ed “Mimi Says No” with remark­able clar­i­ty and nat­u­ral­ness. Their per­for­mance was even bet­ter than I had imag­ined!

   
Next, I’d like to invite a father to take the stage for a guest appear­ance. A very enthu­si­as­tic father came up, bring­ing his twin sons with him. Now our sto­ry has become a “Dad + Twins Mimi” com­bi­na­tion! The two lit­tle boys clear­ly could­n’t express them­selves as clear­ly as the girl Mimi, but when it came to the tum­ble down the slide, they showed off their true act­ing skills, per­form­ing a very con­vinc­ing fall that had the chil­dren in the audi­ence imi­tat­ing them. When the father lift­ed the twins from the clam­or­ing crowd, I could­n’t help but feel a warm surge of emo­tion…

   
Mimi is a sto­ry that res­onates deeply with chil­dren. It is a bless­ing to read about Mim­i’s child­hood, and it is also a bless­ing to share Mimi with chil­dren.

   
[Video Shar­ing] The “Mimi Series” is Tai­wan’s most pop­u­lar orig­i­nal chil­dren’s pic­ture book series, with copy­rights sold in over ten coun­tries. “Mimi Says No” is per­haps its most excit­ing and rep­re­sen­ta­tive work. This ani­mat­ed short rein­ter­prets the orig­i­nal book with a unique and engag­ing twist. The orig­i­nal book, writ­ten by Zhou Yifen and illus­trat­ed by Chen Zhiyuan, is pub­lished in sim­pli­fied Chi­nese by Relay Press, and a spe­cial com­mem­o­ra­tive edi­tion in mul­ti­ple lan­guages is pub­lished by Hebei Chil­dren’s Pub­lish­ing House.