Lecture Outline on the Development of Picture Books over the Past Century

1. The Ori­gin of Pic­ture Books
1. World Atlas (the world’s first illus­trat­ed chil­dren’s book)
——What do pic­tures bring to chil­dren?
2. The sec­ond half of the 19th cen­tu­ry, the era of Calde­cott and Green­away;
3. In 1902, “The Tale of Peter Rab­bit” was pub­lished — why is it con­sid­ered a pio­neer­ing work?
4. The Pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion Process of Amer­i­can Chil­dren’s Libraries in the 1910s: The Rela­tion­ship between Read­ing Forms and Demand
 
 1920s and 1930s: “A Mil­lion Cats,” “Made­line,” and “The Cow Who Loved Flow­ers”

2. Pic­ture books in the mod­ern sense
1. A break­through in the view of chil­dren: chil­dren are treat­ed as unique indi­vid­u­als rather than as depen­dents of adults, and are ful­ly respect­ed (rec­og­nized and pro­mot­ed). Lit­er­ary exper­i­ments include “The Run­away Bun­ny” and “Holes Are for Dig­ging.”
2. Authen­tic child­hood appeal: Unafraid of any themes or mate­ri­als that tru­ly impact chil­dren’s lives — “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Kitchen Night Rhap­sody,” “The Bad­ger’s Gift,” and “Feifei Is Angry.”
3. A great expan­sion of cre­ative rich­ness: Due to var­i­ous eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal rea­sons, as well as a cer­tain sense of social respon­si­bil­i­ty, the cre­ation of chil­dren’s books in the 20th cen­tu­ry attract­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the most out­stand­ing writ­ers and artists in soci­ety — “A Luo Has a Col­ored Pen­cil”, “Afu the Field Mouse”, “The Giv­ing Tree”
4. Pic­ture books also pro­vide artists with ample space for self-expres­sion — “In the For­est”, “The Cat Who Lived a Mil­lion Times”, “The Lost Cor­ner”, “The Big Bear in the For­est” — not just for chil­dren.
5. Grad­u­al­ly mature forms of expres­sion – text-image rela­tion­ship: text × image – “Rose the Hen Goes for a Walk” and “Where the Wild Things Are”
6. Infil­tra­tion and inte­gra­tion of lit­er­ary and artis­tic gen­res — “Miffy at the Sea­side”, “The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar”, “Riv­er Swim­ming with Uncle Gum”, “Goril­la”, “The Moment Col­lec­tor”, “The Bal­lad of a Stray Dog”
7. Deep inte­gra­tion with chil­dren’s edu­ca­tion — “Three Goats Gulp Gulp”, “The Lit­tle House”, “The Cat in the Top Hat”, “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Are You Look­ing At?”, “Frog and Toad”, “Who Hmmmed on My Head”

3. Trends in the Past Two or Three Decades
1. The dra­mat­ic increase in pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion capac­i­ty, the trend toward monop­oly in the pub­lish­ing indus­try, and the push for inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers and book­stores to survive—the trend toward indus­tri­al­ized pic­ture book pro­duc­tion, with large series, large quan­ti­ties, low prices, cater­ing to super­fi­cial demand, and rapid­ly cap­tur­ing the mar­ket…
2. The impact of the trend of elec­tron­ic read­ing — “Dot Dot Dot”
3. Post­mod­ern, post-post­mod­ern, inno­v­a­tive, and chal­leng­ing works of form and con­tent: David Wis­ner (The Three Lit­tle Pigs), Antho­ny Brown (Voic­es in the Park), Burn­ing­ham, Chen Zhiy­ong (The Arrival, The Crim­son Tree, Lost and Found), and Emi­ly Gravett (Big Bad Wolf)
4. Adher­ence to the Pic­ture Book Tra­di­tion — “The Library Lion,” “Kit­ten Chas­ing the Moon,” “Stone Soup,” “Sto­ries of Peach Blos­som Spring,” the “Mimi” series, and “Amo’s Sick Day”

4. Orig­i­nal pic­ture books from main­land Chi­na
1. Explo­ration in the 20th cen­tu­ry, born from com­ic strips — A col­lec­tion of Chi­nese clas­sic pic­ture books from the Cater­pil­lar Chil­dren’s Library
2. New explo­rations since 2002: Qiy­ibao, Xiong Liang; Xinyi Orig­i­nal, Ori­en­tal Doll; Poplar Orig­i­nal; Five-Col­ored Soil, Cen­tral Acad­e­my of Fine Arts; Bao Dong­ni Team…
3. The influ­ence of the Xinyi Lit­er­ary Award and the Feng Zikai Pic­ture Book Award and oth­er influ­ences
4. Exam­ples of orig­i­nal mas­ter­pieces from the past 10 years: the “Pic­ture Book Chi­na” series (“Lit­tle Stone Lion”, “Rab­bit God”, etc.), the “Sen­sa­tion­al Chi­na” series (“Jingju Cats”, etc.), the “Wild Child” series; “Reunion”, “A Gar­den of Veg­eta­bles Becomes a Spir­it”, “Post Horse”, “Bao­er”, “Leak”, “That Deep Blue Bird Is My Dad”, “Ann’s Seed”, “The Frog and the Boy”, “Morn­ing Mar­ket in Lotus Town”, “Flame”, “Mys­tery Play”, “Oh My God! Wrong!”, “Water Monk”, “Child­hood” orig­i­nal pic­ture books, and the “Most Beau­ti­ful Chi­na Series” pic­ture books.

Ref­er­ence Links:
Ajia Sto­ry­telling:http://blog.sina.com.cn/ajiashuoshu
A brief sum­ma­ry of the devel­op­ment of pic­ture books world­wide (focus­ing on cur­rent­ly pub­lished Eng­lish pic­ture books)
Mas­ters of the Art of Sto­ry­telling for Chil­dren (Blog Series)

ref­er­ence book:
World Pic­ture Book Read­ing and Clas­sics (Peng Yi)
What Makes a Good Pic­ture Book Good (Hao Guang­cai)
Chil­dren’s Books Are Chil­dren’s Books (Huang Naiyu)
A Year of Pic­ture Book Read­ing (Vivian Garcin Paley)
How to Read Pic­ture Books (Peng Yi)
Pic­ture Book Appre­ci­a­tion and Cre­ative Teach­ing (Wang Lin
Yu Zhiy­ing)
The Art of Pic­ture Book Read­ing (Chen Hui)