Argentine Primera División: What is the use of picture books? (Recording)

(Decem­ber 19, 2007“2007 Top 10 Chil­dren’s Books” Press Con­fer­ence(Speech on

*Note: The fol­low­ing is a com­pi­la­tion made by an edi­tor friend based on the record­ing (Link to the orig­i­nal text), maybe I didn’t explain some things clear­ly at that time, and the mean­ing of the sort­ed out is a bit unclear. I have mod­i­fied it here with blue font.

Let me talk about the “med­i­c­i­nal” val­ue of pic­ture books. Pic­ture books are very use­ful, but it is dif­fi­cult to clear­ly define their spe­cif­ic uses.

The pur­pose of lan­guage

First, let’s talk about lan­guage. Pic­ture books are often crit­i­cized for hav­ing too few words. Buy­ers often think that with so few words, they’re use­less. How­ev­er, it’s impor­tant to under­stand that in a good pic­ture book, the images play a vital role, and the text does­n’t take a back seat. Of course, the pic­ture books I’m talk­ing about here also include word­less books, but that’s an excep­tion. Most pic­ture books com­bine text and images. The text is sub­ject to cer­tain con­straints, but it strives to ful­fill its role. This strict dis­ci­pline is very sim­i­lar to the writ­ing of poet­ry. There­fore, the text of a good pic­ture book tru­ly is like poetry—poetry and paint­ing.
Let me give you a few exam­ples. If I had to give you some exam­ples, I would­n’t give you any­thing else but the books that made the list this year.

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This is “Courage,” a book I was for­tu­nate to trans­late. There are many kinds of courage, some ordi­nary, some awe-inspir­ing.

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In short, no mat­ter what kind, courage is courage. This is a play­ful one: rid­ing a roller coast­er, your face turns green from the shock, then you have the courage to do it again, and then you’re scared green again. Courage is know­ing there’s a moun­tain and con­quer­ing it. Courage is explor­ing space and the depths of the ocean. Courage is the grass break­ing through the snow.

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Pic­ture books are some­times heart­warm­ing chil­dren’s poems, which I par­tic­u­lar­ly like.

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My Dad eats as much as a horse, swims as fast as a fish, is as strong as a goril­la, and as hap­py as a hip­popota­mus.
This is “The Taste of the Moon.” What does the moon taste like? Is it sweet or salty? I real­ly want to taste it.

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Ani­mals always think this when they look at the moon at night. How­ev­er, no mat­ter how they stretch their necks, arms and legs, they can­not reach the moon. It’s very inter­est­ing.

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Some pic­ture books are like roman­tic nar­ra­tive prose poems, like “Flower Granny,” in which a girl lives in a small house by the sea, sur­round­ed by blue, pur­ple, and pink flow­ers. Who says pic­ture books have few words? Every word here is worth a thou­sand gold. Good writ­ing is tru­ly won­der­ful.
In addi­tion to learn­ing Chi­nese, they also need to learn Eng­lish. I specif­i­cal­ly picked a book that my daugh­ter has recent­ly loved, “Dr. Seuss’s Bilin­gual Clas­sics.” That book series also hap­pened to be on the list.

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I recent­ly caught a cold and looked a lit­tle sad, so she used the words in the book to tease me: Dad is sad.
Very, very sad. / He had a bad day. / What a day Dad
had!

Chil­dren, espe­cial­ly between the ages of two and five, often have the abil­i­ty to absorb lan­guage. As chil­dren grow old­er, they retain this abil­i­ty, though they may not ful­ly absorb it, but they do have a strong sense of lan­guage. The ques­tion is: what kind of lan­guage should we feed our chil­dren?

For artis­tic pur­pos­es

Each pic­ture book is incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful, so I won’t list them all. The pic­ture books on this year’s list are also quite unique. From Novem­ber of last year to this year, I count­ed over 300 excel­lent pic­ture books intro­duced. Many of these excel­lent books aren’t even on the list. Among the books on the list, I took a clos­er look and saw that they all rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent styles. For exam­ple, the most impres­sive ones, like “Lit­tle Black Fish,” men­tioned by Teacher Chen, are abstract; “My Dad” is sur­re­al; there’s also the very real­is­tic style of “Flower Granny”; and “The Taste of the Moon,” with its mur­al-like style and strong three-dimen­sion­al effect, all have styles. But it’s not just about look­ing beau­ti­ful, or being pret­ty.
For exam­ple, this book (Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low) doesn’t seem to be very beau­ti­ful. Some peo­ple think that if some­thing is beau­ti­ful, it should be rich. Of course, if it is rich, it can also be beau­ti­ful, but some­times it can also be beau­ti­ful if it is not very rich.
I’d like to specif­i­cal­ly men­tion the book “Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low.” Pro­fes­sor Chen just men­tioned “The Lit­tle Black Fish.” Their artist, Lion­ni, is anoth­er one of my favorites. He was a tal­ent­ed artist as a child and mar­ried at 19. Some say mar­ry­ing too young is a mis­take, but mar­ry­ing at 19 was a bless­ing. At 20, he fled to the Unit­ed States for polit­i­cal rea­sons. Mus­soli­ni came to pow­er when he was 20, and the father of his wife was a co-founder of the Ital­ian Com­mu­nist Par­ty. He had already been a promi­nent fig­ure in Italy, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Futur­ism. He pur­sued graph­ic design and art in the Unit­ed States, and lat­er served as pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Graph­ic Design­ers for 10 years, hold­ing a high­ly respect­ed posi­tion in the art world. Because he mar­ried young, he like­ly had sons ear­ly, his sons mar­ried young, and he also had grand­chil­dren ear­ly. At 49, he fre­quent­ly took short trips, and on the train he brought his two grandchildren—becoming a grand­fa­ther at 49, and with two chil­dren, it was quite a com­mo­tion. What should he do? He picked up a mag­a­zine at ran­dom. Graph­ic design­ers always have to car­ry a mag­a­zine with them, Life mag­a­zine. He tore the pic­tures inside into round blocks of yel­low, blue, green and oth­er col­ors, spread them out in a black brief­case, and began to tell a sto­ry: This is Lit­tle Blue, this is Lit­tle Yel­low — this is his debut work.

He lat­er cre­at­ed many excel­lent pic­ture books, many of which have been exhib­it­ed around the world, and many of his works have become bench­marks in graph­ic design. But he lat­er said some­thing quite unbe­liev­able: “Of all the art I’ve cre­at­ed, I con­sid­er the first page of Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low, the first page of the book, to be my most per­fect work.”

Want to see what this page looks like?

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This is what Lionel Mes­si con­sid­ered to be the most per­fect of all his artis­tic cre­ations.

What is art? This actu­al­ly leads us to think: Why? Of course, there are many rea­sons. You need to under­stand the per­son, under­stand his style, and use cer­tain tech­niques, such as adding at least two lines. It’s very inter­est­ing to see, even though it’s a sim­ple page, it’s still very sophis­ti­cat­ed. From the col­or to the struc­ture and for­mat: why must it be square? Why is it so? There are many rea­sons. What theme did he want to express? Through­out his life, Leo Lion­ni sought to express a theme in his works:Who am I? Know your­self——This is Xiao Huang, and this is Xiao Lan. They are stand­ing in the mid­dle of the pic­ture, a lit­tle high­er. Per­haps they used the most appro­pri­ate method and the most appro­pri­ate form to express the ideas they want­ed to express most accu­rate­ly. This may be art.

What is art, real­ly? Can chil­dren under­stand it? Adults might won­der, “If even I can’t see it, how can it be con­sid­ered a good paint­ing?” Many peo­ple wor­ry about this, includ­ing many oth­er works. It does­n’t mat­ter. Chil­dren read dif­fer­ent­ly than we do. They enjoy it, they enjoy it from the heart. They read it if they need to, and they enjoy it if they want to. That’s good enough. There­fore, I believe pic­ture books can have a pro­found impact on this kind of artis­tic edu­ca­tion. I deeply admire some of the tru­ly remark­able artists abroad who are will­ing to cre­ate works for chil­dren. Of course, this has to do with our mar­ket and the per­spec­tives of adults.

See­ing the work done by Xiong Lei and Xiong Liang, I also admire them very much. In addi­tion to art, cul­tur­al her­itage is actu­al­ly very impor­tant.

For chil­dren’s diverse devel­op­ment

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Beyond our lan­guage, there’s also ongo­ing dis­cus­sion about its diverse uses, iden­ti­fy­ing and rec­om­mend­ing its poten­tial func­tions. Let me give you a few exam­ples, like the sto­ry of “Croc­o­dile Falls in Love with Giraffe.” The croc­o­dile and the giraffe are so dif­fer­ent, yet they both want to inter­act. The croc­o­dile falls in love with the giraffe and wants to show it his sweet­est smile. The giraffe can’t see because it’s too tall, and its head is always halfway up in the clouds. The croc­o­dile tries a lot of tricks, like putting a rope around the giraffe and say­ing, “Look at my sweet­est smile!” What hap­pens? The giraffe gets star­tled and shakes its neck, send­ing the croc­o­dile to the hos­pi­tal. This, too, is a form of inter­ac­tion; it’s tru­ly about inter­ac­tion, how to inter­act with peo­ple.
There is also “Big Feet Dances Bal­let”, which can be said to be about music. It is so beau­ti­ful, come and feel it.

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Obser­va­tion­al intel­li­gence. “A Falling Leaf” is also a new clas­sic. It’s very beau­ti­ful and allows you to observe the world togeth­er through this book. It’s a pho­to­graph­ic pic­ture book that uses pho­tos to express the world.

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Math­e­mat­i­cal and log­i­cal intel­li­gence. The snake “Crick­et­ta” was able to lis­ten to lec­tures and, after com­plet­ing them, became self-taught. The num­bers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 were all trans­formed from the snake Crick­et­ta, and he also pos­sessed math­e­mat­i­cal abil­i­ties, though of course, they were some­what forced.

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Intro­spec­tive intel­li­gence. In fact, every good pic­ture book has intro­spec­tive fea­tures, includ­ing “Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low.” “Chick­en Carmela”—all the chicks lay eggs at their appoint­ed time, but it’s this lit­tle chick, Carmela, who kicks rocks and lays, always lays. There are always more inter­est­ing things in life than lay­ing eggs—isn’t this intro­spec­tion?

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Of course, there are many more to list than this. I once made a list, which was quite enter­tain­ing. But I think this is just for fun, and don’t take it too seri­ous­ly. It def­i­nite­ly has this func­tion, but we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to think about it that way.

For a healthy per­son­al­i­ty and a hap­py life

Some researchers empha­size a more holis­tic approach, argu­ing that the greater sig­nif­i­cance of shar­ing pic­ture books with chil­dren lies in help­ing them devel­op a healthy per­son­al­i­ty and lay a sol­id spir­i­tu­al foun­da­tion for a life­time of hap­pi­ness. In oth­er words, hav­ing courage isn’t about learn­ing a spe­cif­ic area, but about fac­ing life with humor and being pos­i­tive and coura­geous. For exam­ple, books like “My Dad” and “Lit­tle Blue and Lit­tle Yel­low” allow chil­dren to savor and expe­ri­ence the bond of fam­i­ly and friend­ship, as well as the roman­tic love of “Croc­o­dile Loves Giraffe.”

Love is actu­al­ly very impor­tant, and where love comes from is also cru­cial. This is espe­cial­ly true when teach­ing chil­dren about love. When pub­lish­ers say it’s dif­fi­cult to talk about love with five- or six-year-olds, let me put it this way: from kinder­garten, ele­men­tary school, junior high school, high school, col­lege, to grad­u­ate school, has any­one ever taught us a spe­cif­ic course on love? No! We all learned it blind­ly. Why can’t we lay this foun­da­tion for chil­dren from the age of five or six? We should do this.

For exam­ple, there’s “Flower Granny,” which tells a sto­ry about set­ting high aspi­ra­tions in an ordi­nary or extra­or­di­nary life, which I find tru­ly remark­able. Also, “A Falling Leaf,” which explores the mean­ing of life, is also remark­able.

That’s also one way of say­ing it.

For a hap­py fam­i­ly

There’s anoth­er point, par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to the par­ent-child read­ing we’ve been advo­cat­ing for in “Par­ents Must Read,” that pic­ture books are actu­al­ly very help­ful for hap­py fam­i­lies. Nao Mat­sui always reminds us to think of pic­ture books as books that adults read to chil­dren.

My daugh­ter is 8 years old. She can read nov­els, but if I have the chance every night, I will still read books like this to her. She will not read such books by her­self first. Some­times she will look at the pic­tures and then say, “Dad, please read to me.” This is a kind of plea­sure. It is dif­fi­cult to explain the joy of this kind of plea­sure — I can only bor­row the words from the fairy tale and say that they lived hap­pi­ly ever after.

Let me show you some pic­tures on the “Blue Kan­ga­roo” web­site. It is beau­ti­ful for a child to read “Guess How Much I Love You” by her­self. It is even more beau­ti­ful when her moth­er reads it to her. It is even more beau­ti­ful when her par­ents read it togeth­er. It is very warm and a hap­py fam­i­ly begins from now on. This is also an “adver­tise­ment”.

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Use­less Use

The use­ful­ness of “use­less­ness.” Hav­ing said all this, I’ve always held onto a belief: if we view pic­ture books sole­ly in terms of their use­ful­ness, we’re often under­es­ti­mat­ing them. The bet­ter the book, the less spe­cif­ic its pur­pose. And the more you approach shar­ing it with chil­dren with a sense of use­less­ness, the more use­ful it may be. The great­est strength of pic­ture books is their abil­i­ty to help chil­dren devel­op a love of read­ing. This love, beyond sim­ply under­stand­ing read­ing, involves learn­ing to love itself. It’s a uni­ver­sal love: love for one­self, love for oth­ers, love for life, and love for the world. I can demon­strate why those who love pic­ture books tend to love the world.
Look at how the seeds of this pic­ture book are sown, how the seeds of hap­pi­ness are sown, every­one take a look.

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In the sto­ry, the flower lady, Miss Lu, dis­cov­ered such a beau­ti­ful flower. She col­lect­ed the seeds, bought and gath­ered them, and scat­tered them along the road. By the spring and autumn of the fol­low­ing year, beau­ti­ful flow­ers bloomed every­where, and the chil­dren also learned to pick flow­ers and sow seeds.

In the past few years, from rough­ly 2003 until now, many such peo­ple have emerged in main­land Chi­na. What do they do? They go to kinder­gartens, libraries, and schools to tell sto­ries and read pic­ture books to chil­dren.

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So these peo­ple are some­times called Grand­ma Hua, Uncle Hua, Dad­dy Hua, or Aun­tie Hua. This is Dad­dy Hua shar­ing the book with the chil­dren. You can see it’s quite inter­est­ing: Dad­dy Hua is sit­ting on the floor with the chil­dren, pre­vent­ing them from bump­ing into the pro­jec­tor.

This is at the Cap­i­tal Library. This is our sec­ond year of train­ing for seed sto­ry­tellers. Vol­un­teers come to the library, learn through con­ver­sa­tions and cours­es, and mas­ter basic knowl­edge and skills in read­ing to chil­dren. They then go to libraries, kinder­gartens, and schools to tell sto­ries with chil­dren. It’s a joy. This is the Chil­dren’s Library at the Cap­i­tal Library. They seem to be experts here, too, telling sto­ries. If you look close­ly, you can see “Cric­ta” on the table.
Let’s take a look at what warmth is and what a har­mo­nious soci­ety is.

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This is a cake. It’s very hap­py. This is “My Book” and “The Very Hun­gry Snake”. It’s very inter­est­ing. Make books into cakes. Books can be so fra­grant and deli­cious.

So, for a child, books con­tribute to a hap­py life. For adults, we may not have the time to be that hap­py, but I believe they still con­tribute to hap­pi­ness, or at least enrich our lives. For a group, for a soci­ety, I think they def­i­nite­ly con­tribute to a har­mo­nious soci­ety.

Because of pic­ture books, they, you, and we live hap­pi­ly togeth­er from now on.

This is my bless­ing, thank you every­one.