Discussion with teachers about picture book reading instruction (Q&A at the Stone Soup Joyful Reading Campus Alliance event)

   
On the after­noon of March 15th, the Hefei branch of the “Stone Soup Joy­ful Read­ing Cam­pus Alliance” event was held at the Bin­hu Cam­pus of the Hefei Nor­mal Uni­ver­si­ty Affil­i­at­ed Pri­ma­ry School. After the tour and before the prin­ci­pals’ round­table meet­ing, there was approx­i­mate­ly 20 min­utes of dis­cus­sion. The host was very atten­tive and hand­ed me some slips of paper with ques­tions from teach­ers. Due to time con­straints, I only select­ed a few and shared some of my thoughts. Some oth­er ques­tions were also very inter­est­ing. I’ve com­piled them here for sup­ple­men­tary dis­cus­sion.
 
   
Let’s first review a few issues that were dis­cussed on the spot.

   
【Note 1】
   
“Pic­ture books” are defined as “bridge books” (suit­able for ages 0–3) in Europe and the Unit­ed States. Should they be repo­si­tioned as extracur­ric­u­lar read­ing mate­ri­als for stu­dents in grades 1–3?
 
   
【Note 2】
   
Pic­ture books are the art of pic­tures (beau­ti­ful pic­tures), the art of words (few words), and visu­al art. They are both edu­ca­tion­al and infor­ma­tive. So, how does a Chi­nese teacher approach pic­ture book teach­ing? (It looks like a pic­ture book, but it’s actu­al­ly teach­ing, but I don’t know where to start.)
 
   
【Note 3】
   
How to explore the hid­den mean­ing of pic­ture books?
 
   
I pri­or­i­tized these ques­tions because, over the past few days, most of the read­ing lessons and activ­i­ties you’ve attend­ed have involved pic­ture books, which has brought both joy and con­fu­sion. The ques­tion on note 1 clear­ly stems from con­fu­sion.
 
   
At the event, I first invit­ed teach­ers who had attend­ed to share their expe­ri­ences. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, on the morn­ing of March 15th, a teacher at Wanghu Road Ele­men­tary School used “Rain­bow Flow­ers” in a class, and anoth­er teacher at the Nor­mal Uni­ver­si­ty Affil­i­at­ed Pri­ma­ry School used the book in a class that after­noon. Among the over 100 teach­ers present, I final­ly found a few who had attend­ed both class­es on the same day!
 
   
The teacher who shared her impres­sions of the lec­ture (I’m sor­ry I did­n’t catch her name) put it very well and authen­ti­cal­ly. She said that although it was the same book, she heard two dif­fer­ent sto­ries. The morn­ing teacher was an art teacher, who approached the chil­dren from a more artis­tic per­spec­tive, such as intro­duc­ing warm and cool col­ors and strength­en­ing their under­stand­ing of col­or through hands-on and cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties. The after­noon teacher, how­ev­er, was like­ly a lan­guage teacher, who immersed her­self more deeply in the sto­ry and helped the chil­dren find mov­ing moments.
 
   
Yes, the author and artist of “Rain­bow Flower” would not object to dif­fer­ent ways of read­ing the book and expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fer­ent sto­ries. I’m also par­tic­u­lar­ly grate­ful to Teacher Zhan. I’ve lec­tured on “Rain­bow Flower” many times, lis­tened to it many times, and pon­dered it repeat­ed­ly. But that day, dur­ing the lec­ture, I first noticed (thanks to Teacher Zhan’s reminder) that the col­or pat­terns on the front and back but­ter­fly pages of the book are exact­ly oppo­site. When read togeth­er, the col­ors cycle. Does this imply the cycle of life?
 
   
There­fore, as long as we have per­son­al expe­ri­ence com­mu­ni­cat­ing with chil­dren through pic­ture books, whether in class or not, we will under­stand that this type of book is def­i­nite­ly not “age-appro­pri­ate” for chil­dren aged 0–3. The con­cept of “bridge books” men­tioned in the first note is also an inde­pen­dent con­cept, dif­fer­ent from pic­ture books (pic­ture books). It is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be a bridge for chil­dren to tran­si­tion from read­ing pic­ture books to read­ing text books such as nov­els. The “Frog and Toad” series is prob­a­bly a typ­i­cal bridge book.
 
   
As far as I know, in Europe and the Unit­ed States, pic­ture books have been wide­ly used in ele­men­tary school class­rooms since at least the 1980s. Some teach­ers have also begun to intro­duce them into mid­dle school class­rooms as a con­ve­nient tool for learn­ing read­ing strate­gies, and some have even used them in uni­ver­si­ty class­rooms. Not long ago, an old friend of ours, a pro­fes­sor who teach­es med­ical ethics at a uni­ver­si­ty, began using pic­ture books to intro­duce phi­los­o­phy and ethics. For exam­ple, he believes that “Croc­o­dile is Afraid of the Den­tist” is a work that most intu­itive­ly describes the “doc­tor-patient rela­tion­ship.”
 
   
The Tale of Peter Rab­bit, pub­lished in 1902 (I had the priv­i­lege of trans­lat­ing it), is con­sid­ered the pio­neer­ing work of the mod­ern pic­ture book. The orig­i­nal idea for the book came from a let­ter writ­ten by Miss Porter to a five-year-old boy. Pic­ture books offer many pos­si­bil­i­ties: lit­er­ary, artis­tic, philo­soph­i­cal… What mat­ters is how we, the read­ers, real­ize them through read­ing.
 
   
As the ques­tions in Notes 2 and 3 point out, pic­ture books them­selves are not sim­ple, and the many pro­found mean­ings hid­den behind them often even daunt read­ers.
 
   
Yes­ter­day morn­ing (March 14th), I read anoth­er pic­ture book, “The Laugh­ing Old Lady Who Lost Her Rice Ball,” to over a thou­sand chil­dren on the play­ground at Tunxi Road Pri­ma­ry School. It also hap­pened to be my trans­la­tion. Many of the teach­ers here may have heard that sto­ry, and the chil­dren were also laugh­ing along with me, laugh­ing unre­strained­ly, “Eh—hee—hee—hee—.” Don’t you think it’s hilar­i­ous? I’m sure this kind of laugh­ter will amuse the chil­dren, and they’ll enjoy it end­less­ly in class or at home, even draw­ing the atten­tion of con­fused adults. It took me over a month to trans­late this laugh­ter. I pri­mar­i­ly researched back­ground infor­ma­tion about the sto­ry, hop­ing to under­stand the author’s mes­sage through this recur­ring laugh­ter.
 
   
I dis­cov­ered this sto­ry is a very authen­tic Japan­ese folk­tale, col­lect­ed and com­piled by Laf­ca­dio Hearn, a nat­u­ral­ized Greek, and then adapt­ed into its cur­rent form by Amer­i­can writ­ers. After research­ing all the sim­i­lar works by Laf­ca­dio Hearn that I could find, and then read­ing Hayao Kawai’s “The Leg­ends and Minds of the Japan­ese,” I real­ized that the core of the sto­ry is “ghost laugh­ter,” a plot unique to Japan­ese folk­tales. Laf­ca­dio Hearn’s col­lec­tion empha­sizes the eerie and some­what ter­ri­fy­ing (with a touch of Goth­ic fic­tion), but as a chil­dren’s pic­ture book, this is clear­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly weak­ened. Fur­ther­more, accord­ing to Hayao Kawai, the fun of both human and ghost laugh­ter lies in the bal­ance of pow­er and the over­com­ing of fear. There­fore, the laugh­ter in this sto­ry should­n’t be a gen­er­al joy­ous one, but rather a strange yet com­i­cal one. It might sound a bit creepy from a dis­tance, but up close, it’s unde­ni­ably hilar­i­ous.
 
   
I’m shar­ing this exam­ple to share my own expe­ri­ence. A tru­ly excel­lent pic­ture book holds end­less trea­sures to be dis­cov­ered; it’s def­i­nite­ly not just for chil­dren aged 0–3. So, how should we approach shar­ing with chil­dren? For exam­ple, should we talk about Laf­ca­dio Hearn, Hayao Kawai, or top­ics like the “ghost laugh”? As you can see, I actu­al­ly did­n’t say any­thing when I was with the chil­dren; I sim­ply taught them the “ghost laugh.” This sto­ry­telling expe­ri­ence only show­cas­es a small por­tion of the pic­ture book, striv­ing to pique the young audi­ence’s inter­est. They need to dis­cov­er much more on their own, and per­haps they will dis­cov­er more than we do. At least it’s like­ly to be dif­fer­ent.
 
   
Let’s go back to the ques­tion on note 2: So how does a Chi­nese teacher teach pic­ture books?
 
   
I think teach­ers of any sub­ject can do this, not just Chi­nese teach­ers. I would like to offer three stones to teach­ers:
 
   
First, read repeat­ed­ly and read in a vari­ety of ways: Read it your­self, read it to your chil­dren, lis­ten to oth­ers read it, a good pic­ture book can be read with new mean­ing no mat­ter how many times;
 
   
Sec­ond, learn deeply and show hap­pi­lyWhen we study on our own, we can nev­er go too deep. But when we share with chil­dren and guide their read­ing, only one cri­te­ri­on is most impor­tant: is every­one enjoy­ing it? Adults should hold back and try not to inter­pret too much, leav­ing more oppor­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren.
 
   
Third, open, open, and open againWhen inter­pret­ing pic­ture books, it’s often dif­fi­cult to define right or wrong. Fur­ther­more, when read­ing such works, teach­ers and stu­dents are essen­tial­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing on the same lev­el. While teach­ers have exten­sive life and read­ing expe­ri­ence, stu­dents can be more sen­si­tive, often bet­ter than adults at grasp­ing the details of a pic­ture. Main­tain­ing an open mind is cru­cial.
 
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After dis­cussing the above three ques­tions, a teacher imme­di­ate­ly sent a fol­low-up ques­tion:
 
   
【Note 4】
   
After lis­ten­ing to Teacher Zhan’s lec­ture on “Rain­bow Flow­ers”, I saw that the teacher taught the class in the form of “sto­ry­telling”, which was slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nal lan­guage of the pic­ture book. Is this appro­pri­ate?
 
   
It’s real­ly not easy to answer this ques­tion, because Mr. Zhan is right here O(∩_∩)O Haha~
 
   
But I sin­cere­ly think there’s noth­ing inap­pro­pri­ate about this kind of sto­ry­telling. I also noticed that Teacher Zhan used mul­ti­me­dia dur­ing her sto­ry­telling, pro­ject­ing Pow­er­Point slides and adding musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment. The scene she cre­at­ed was tru­ly mov­ing, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the falling snow. Dur­ing the sto­ry­telling, she often paused to invite the chil­dren to spec­u­late about what would hap­pen next, such as which col­or petal the rain­bow flower might offer. The chil­dren’s answers and dis­cus­sions were also very inter­est­ing. I think if this approach were to be applied to a spe­cif­ic mod­el, it would prob­a­bly be close to the “inter­rup­tion-style” sto­ry­telling rec­om­mend­ed by the Cater­pil­lar Chil­dren’s Phi­los­o­phy Foun­da­tion in Tai­wan.
 
   
But—and this but is real­ly important—I think the most impor­tant thing isn’t whether the sto­ry­telling style is appro­pri­ate in a par­tic­u­lar class (espe­cial­ly an open class), but whether we’re shar­ing it with chil­dren reg­u­lar­ly. If we only have one or two oppor­tu­ni­ties a year to use pic­ture books in read­ing lessons, and if we do it that way every time, I think it’s inad­e­quate. But if we do it fre­quent­ly, two or three times a week or even dai­ly, then the sto­ry­telling method becomes less impor­tant, because dif­fer­ent sto­ries will nat­u­ral­ly lead to dif­fer­ent sto­ry­telling styles. This diver­si­ty of read­ing styles is one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing qual­i­ties of pic­ture books.
 
   
There are a few more ques­tions that were not answered on the spot, which are sum­ma­rized as fol­lows:
  
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【Note 5】
   
1. Pic­ture book read­ing teach­ing is now pop­u­lar all over the world. Should the core of pic­ture book teach­ing be fun, human­i­ty or instru­men­tal­i­ty?
   
2. How to reflect the strong fla­vor of Chi­nese lan­guage in pic­ture book teach­ing?
   
3. When teach­ers are telling pic­ture books, should they tell the sto­ry in a coher­ent and com­plete man­ner, or should they design ques­tions and sus­pense into the sto­ry?
 
   
Ajia: I think pic­ture book read­ing instruc­tion is far from being a trend right now, and most teach­ers in many parts of Chi­na are still com­plete­ly unaware of it. Inter­est­ing­ly, how­ev­er, pic­ture book read­ing has become a promi­nent fea­ture of school read­ing pro­mo­tion activ­i­ties in recent years. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true in Hefei, where mul­ti-school col­lab­o­ra­tive read­ing ini­tia­tives, exem­pli­fied by the “Good Books for Every­one to Read” ini­tia­tive launched by Tun Pri­ma­ry School, began in 2006. While there was some sol­id ini­tial push, the absence of pic­ture books did­n’t seem to gen­er­ate suf­fi­cient buzz. Start­ing around 2009, some pro­gram schools began intro­duc­ing pic­ture books en masse and exper­i­ment­ing with in-class instruc­tion. Grad­u­al­ly, this trend gained momen­tum, sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost­ing chil­dren’s inter­est in read­ing and boost­ing teach­ers’ enthu­si­asm for read­ing activ­i­ties.
 
   
This phe­nom­e­non isn’t a delib­er­ate or cal­cu­lat­ed out­come, but rather a nat­ur­al selec­tion. It also invites us to reflect on what pic­ture books tru­ly offer us. How do they dif­fer from those books tra­di­tion­al­ly rec­om­mend­ed to chil­dren, list­ed as “must-reads” by experts at all lev­els, yet rarely appeal­ing to chil­dren? Under­stand­ing this makes it eas­i­er to grasp the core of pic­ture book instruc­tion.
 
   
My expe­ri­ence is that the biggest dif­fer­ence between pic­ture books and the books tra­di­tion­al­ly intend­ed for chil­dren is their dis­tinct child­like nature—they are writ­ten from a child’s per­spec­tive, appeal to chil­dren, are writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for chil­dren, and res­onate with chil­dren’s hearts. These are often over­looked by adults who have for­got­ten they were once chil­dren them­selves. There­fore, if we must focus on a core prin­ci­ple for pic­ture book instruc­tion, it should be child­like nature.
 
   
The top­ic of how to tell pic­ture books has been dis­cussed before, so I will not repeat it here.
 
   
How­ev­er, regard­ing how to “embody a strong Chi­nese lan­guage fla­vor,” I’d like to share a cur­rent­ly pop­u­lar crit­i­cism: Some­times peo­ple crit­i­cize a read­ing demon­stra­tion class for being “too Chi­nese lan­guage-heavy.” I under­stand this, because after all the effort to get a read­ing class off the ground, it essen­tial­ly becomes a Chi­nese lan­guage class. It’s a bit depress­ing, haha.
 
   
But I nev­er crit­i­cize from this per­spec­tive. On the con­trary, I hope that teach­ers can try to add a “strong read­ing fla­vor” to reg­u­lar Chi­nese class­es. If it is com­ment­ed that the Chi­nese class has “too strong read­ing fla­vor”, it must be a com­pli­ment!
 
   
I under­stand what you mean by “the fla­vor of lan­guage.” Excel­lent pic­ture books are indeed rare mod­els for lan­guage learn­ing. While read­ers ful­ly enjoy the works, com­pe­tent lan­guage teach­ers, if they can nat­u­ral­ly guide them, can also help chil­dren expe­ri­ence the beau­ty of lan­guage. As Suhom­lin­sky put it in “Advice to Teach­ers,” let chil­dren expe­ri­ence the “emo­tion­al col­or of words—their fra­grant aro­ma and rich hues.” Of course, art teach­ers can also help chil­dren appre­ci­ate the beau­ty of pic­tures, math teach­ers can help chil­dren dis­cov­er the beau­ty of math­e­mat­ics and log­ic, and music teach­ers can help them dis­cov­er the beau­ty of rhythm and rhyme… Adults who love phi­los­o­phy can even “do phi­los­o­phy” with chil­dren.
 
   
For exam­ple, the clas­sic book “Hen Rose Goes for a Walk” is often used sim­ply to amuse chil­dren, and it almost always works. For chil­dren in grades two or three and above, this unique nar­ra­tive approach and humor­ous effect might spark inter­est. This could be extend­ed to a prac­tice of expres­sion, explor­ing how to cre­ate humor. Of course, if the child isn’t inter­est­ed, there’s no need to delve into it. For some chil­dren who want to try their hand at sto­ry­telling through pic­tures, this book can also be used to explore the basic rules of pic­ture sto­ry­telling. For most chil­dren, role-play­ing is also a very acces­si­ble activ­i­ty. On the morn­ing of March 15th, I was amazed by a class where a music teacher at Wanghu Road Ele­men­tary School used this method in their music les­son, hav­ing the chil­dren use sim­ple instru­ments (even every­day items like plas­tic bags) to accom­pa­ny the sto­ry, allow­ing them to expe­ri­ence the rela­tion­ship between sound effects, rhythm, and the sto­ry. What a bril­liant idea!
 
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【Note 6】
   
1. Some stu­dents in low­er grades who have a habit of read­ing read a con­sid­er­able amount, but the qual­i­ty of their read­ing varies great­ly. So how can we strike a bal­ance between quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty in low­er grade read­ing?
   
2. Some chil­dren in low­er grades only read when teach­ers assign them extracur­ric­u­lar read­ing assign­ments, or only read when their par­ents ask them to. For these chil­dren, how can we teach­ers guide them in read­ing? What are some prac­ti­cal meth­ods?
 
   
A‑Jia: Every­one goes through a phase of learn­ing how to read at the begin­ning of life. As read­ing skills mature, they begin to move into a more relaxed learn­ing phase through read­ing. I believe the vast major­i­ty of younger chil­dren, includ­ing those you men­tioned who already have a read­ing habit or those who haven’t, are still in the process of learn­ing how to read. As a gen­er­al rule, I don’t believe in strict qual­i­ty require­ments; just read, read, and enjoy. It’s best to choose books that make them for­get they’re even read­ing.
 
   
Lin­guist and read­ing expert Dr. Krashen (author of The Pow­er of Read­ing) has an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive: he believes the most effec­tive way to learn a for­eign lan­guage is to read a lot of “junk” mate­r­i­al in that lan­guage. In short, you should read so much that you for­get what lan­guage the book is writ­ten in. This per­spec­tive is worth con­sid­er­ing.
 
   
How­ev­er, chil­dren are far more for­tu­nate when learn­ing their native lan­guage than adults when learn­ing a for­eign lan­guage. This is because, typ­i­cal­ly, a wealth of chil­dren’s books are pre­pared for these ini­tial stages of learn­ing to read. These books not only make chil­dren for­get that they are writ­ten in a dif­fi­cult lan­guage (per­haps even toys), but are also of high qual­i­ty, allow­ing even adults to gain sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits from dili­gent read­ing. In this unno­ticed and joy­ful expe­ri­ence, chil­dren not only learn how to read but also engage in the most valu­able learn­ing through read­ing, gain­ing valu­able life expe­ri­ences and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for a life­time of hap­pi­ness. These excel­lent chil­dren’s books include excel­lent pic­ture books, comics, chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture in text for­mat, and engag­ing edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als.
 
   
Read­ing is the best game, and games are the best read­ing.
 
   
There may be chil­dren who don’t like read­ing, but there are no chil­dren who don’t enjoy lis­ten­ing to sto­ries or play­ing games. How­ev­er, no one in the world, adults or chil­dren, stu­dents or teach­ers, enjoys being assigned home­work. There­fore, games are clear­ly the best method. Home­work is only mar­gin­al­ly effec­tive unless it’s shaped like a game.
 
   
There are two basic ways to encour­age a love of read­ing in chil­dren: read­ing aloud to them and con­tin­u­ous silent read­ing. The for­mer needs to be a reg­u­lar activ­i­ty, ide­al­ly dai­ly, and ide­al­ly prac­ticed togeth­er at home and at school. Con­tin­u­ous silent read­ing is a bit more com­plex to explain. Tunxi Road Pri­ma­ry School has already run a school-wide con­tin­u­ous silent read­ing pro­gram (before lunch) for an entire semes­ter, which is a suc­cess­ful exam­ple. For more detailed meth­ods, please refer to my arti­cle:
 
   
A casu­al chat in the let­ter: How to teach read­ing lessons to first-grade chil­dren with dif­fer­ent lit­er­a­cy lev­els
 
   
Some sug­ges­tions on reg­u­lar read­ing class­es
   
Dr. Krashen’s guide­lines for imple­ment­ing sus­tained silent read­ing activ­i­ties

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【Note 7】
   
1. Read­ing is indeed an effec­tive way to enlight­en and edu­cate. How can we effec­tive­ly encour­age stu­dents to enjoy read­ing, active­ly read, and read effec­tive­ly?
   
2. Can we mobi­lize par­ents’ sup­port for extracur­ric­u­lar read­ing? Or should we give par­ents “guid­ance require­ments”? Home and school should work togeth­er to pro­mote mutu­al progress.
 
   
Ajia: Chil­dren pri­mar­i­ly learn through play. If read­ing becomes a stu­den­t’s favorite game, many prob­lems can be eas­i­ly solved. Did­n’t Con­fu­cius also say, “Those who enjoy it are not as good as those who enjoy it”? Over the years, our school read­ing pro­mo­tion activ­i­ties have been try­ing to make read­ing a dai­ly activ­i­ty for chil­dren, inte­grat­ing it into dai­ly life and (from a school man­age­ment per­spec­tive) even insti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing it. The found­ing schools of the “Stone Soup Joy­ful Read­ing Cam­pus Alliance” each have their own unique prac­tices. We can exchange ideas, observe and learn from each oth­er, and build on this foun­da­tion to devel­op more inno­v­a­tive approach­es.
 
   
Regard­ing the ques­tion of “Can par­ents be mobi­lized?” the answer is a resound­ing yes: par­ents must be involved. The influ­ence of fam­i­ly on chil­dren far out­weighs the com­bined influ­ence of school, neigh­bor­hood, and sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment. So how can schools mobi­lize parental sup­port?
 
   
As a par­ent of an ele­men­tary school stu­dent myself, I believe the eas­i­est way for teach­ers to mobi­lize parental sup­port is to give them the green light and open­ly invite them to par­tic­i­pate. Most par­ents will be hap­py to do so.
 
   
For exam­ple, Shuguang Road Pri­ma­ry School has estab­lished a par­ent sto­ry­telling team. For grades 1 through 3, they invite sto­ry­telling par­ents to read and tell sto­ries to the chil­dren dur­ing week­ly team activ­i­ties. Each class has three to five par­ents par­tic­i­pat­ing. After a year of con­sis­tent work, they’ve become more expe­ri­enced, and par­ents of first-grade stu­dents are being trained by sec­ond-grade teach­ers and par­ents.
 
   
The sig­nif­i­cance of this approach is not just that some par­ents par­tic­i­pate in read­ing activ­i­ties or that it makes teach­ers feel more relaxed. The tru­ly impor­tant sig­nif­i­cance is that it demon­strates to all chil­dren and par­ents the impor­tance and fun of read­ing. I believe that par­ents in such class­es will be able to read with their chil­dren reg­u­lar­ly and hap­pi­ly.
 
   
Tunxi Road Pri­ma­ry School, Wanghu Road Pri­ma­ry School, Weigang Pri­ma­ry School, Tai­hu Road Pri­ma­ry School, Chang­shi Affil­i­at­ed Pri­ma­ry School and oth­er schools have many inter­est­ing and very effec­tive prac­tices in invit­ing par­ents to par­tic­i­pate in read­ing activ­i­ties. I hope every­one can have in-depth exchanges and dis­cus­sions togeth­er.
 
   
In addi­tion, par­ents in urban schools are gen­er­al­ly more edu­cat­ed and start­ed read­ing pro­mo­tion activ­i­ties ear­li­er than the schools them­selves, and there are many experts among them. There­fore, when invit­ing par­ents to par­tic­i­pate, it is rec­om­mend­ed to have in-depth dis­cus­sions with an atti­tude of learn­ing and dis­cus­sion, which will def­i­nite­ly gain greater sup­port and help.

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【Note 8】
   
Read­ing lit­er­a­ture is an aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence, but this beau­ty is frag­ile and can be harmed by ratio­nal­i­ty. Yet, we often sub­sti­tute ratio­nal analy­sis for emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence. In oth­er words, when and if should we engage in ratio­nal knowledge—such as vocab­u­lary, rhetoric, sen­tence struc­ture, and writ­ing techniques—in aes­thet­ic read­ing?
 
   
Ajia: Indeed, the aes­thet­ic of lit­er­a­ture is sub­tle, and it comes more from the indi­vid­u­al’s sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence, which is often del­i­cate and sen­si­tive… But I think this kind of expe­ri­ence is not always weak. Some­times it is indeed a del­i­cate inter­est like “Do you know, do you know, it should be green, fat, red and thin” or “If I want to see the lin­ger­ing intestines, I will burn all the incense in the gold­en censer”, but it is often as hero­ic and majes­tic as “Live as a hero, die as a ghost hero” or “The riv­er flows east, the waves wash away all the heroes of the ages”.
 
   
Lit­er­ary appre­ci­a­tion is indeed pri­mar­i­ly a process of emo­tion­al and sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence. For exam­ple, if one can­not mem­o­rize Du Fu’s “Eight Poems on Autumn” to the point of being able to recite it, or even to the point of being moved to the point of danc­ing and shak­ing one’s head as one recites it, then any appre­ci­a­tion will like­ly be mere­ly scratch­ing the sur­face. How­ev­er, lit­er­ary appre­ci­a­tion nev­er excludes ratio­nal analy­sis. So-called ratio­nal­i­ty is sim­ply observ­ing the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ences of numer­ous read­ers and extract­ing com­mon­al­i­ties and pat­terns from them. Applied appro­pri­ate­ly, this ratio­nal analy­sis can also infi­nite­ly enhance indi­vid­ual appre­ci­a­tion, as indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence is ulti­mate­ly lim­it­ed. Con­se­quent­ly, for thou­sands of years, schol­ars who have devot­ed exten­sive ana­lyt­i­cal work to inter­pret­ing Du Fu’s poet­ry remain enthu­si­as­tic today. Ye Jiay­ing’s “Col­lect­ed Com­men­taries on Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn” remains the best ref­er­ence book for a deep­er under­stand­ing of “Eight Poems on Autumn.”
 
   
Every­thing has its lim­its. Both pure, nat­ur­al sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence and in-depth ratio­nal analy­sis must be done appro­pri­ate­ly.
 
   
Regard­ing ele­men­tary school chil­dren, I com­plete­ly agree with your point: “We often sub­sti­tute ratio­nal analy­sis for emo­tion­al experience”—this is tru­ly abhor­rent. I believe chil­dren at this stage need rich­er expe­ri­ences: they need more games, read­ing, trav­el, obser­va­tion… and all sorts of hands-on expe­ri­ence. Return­ing to the top­ic of lit­er­ary appre­ci­a­tion, you men­tioned “ratio­nal knowl­edge such as vocab­u­lary, rhetoric, sen­tence struc­ture, and writ­ing tech­niques.” These are the areas where we adults need to focus more. When read­ing with chil­dren, it’s best to pro­ceed slow­ly. Only when chil­dren clear­ly show inter­est and are will­ing or even eager to engage in in-depth dis­cus­sion should we engage in deep­er dis­cus­sion (which is why we need to do our home­work first).
 
   
How­ev­er, as chil­dren grow old­er, they do devel­op a love of ratio­nal analy­sis. As British chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture author and read­ing expert John Cham­bers put it, “Every child is a book crit­ic.” A team of librar­i­ans and lit­er­a­ture teach­ers led by him, after 30 years of research, has devel­oped a method for engag­ing chil­dren in book dis­cus­sions. This method, while pre­serv­ing the emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence of young read­ers, also helps old­er chil­dren learn and mas­ter the art of appre­ci­at­ing lit­er­a­ture. This research is doc­u­ment­ed in the book “Talk About It,” which is often includ­ed in the Chi­nese ver­sion of “Cre­at­ing a Chil­dren’s Read­ing Envi­ron­ment.” For more on this top­ic, please refer to my arti­cle:
 
    Read­ing strate­gies in pro­mot­ing chil­dren’s read­ing through casu­al chats on Wei­bo
   
But one thing is cer­tain: guid­ing chil­dren to read and read­ing a lot of inter­est­ing works is more impor­tant than any­thing else.
 
Argen­tine Primera División in Bei­jing
March 20–21, 2012