[Repost] Welcome everyone to read and chat about those “useless” books

This morn­ing, I launched a blog for the Red Mud Chil­dren’s Clas­sic Book Study Group, invit­ing par­tic­i­pants to share their thoughts. The basic prin­ci­ple of the Red Mud Study Group is sim­ply this: try to read more “use­less” books with the mind­set that “they may not be of any use” :)Orig­i­nal address:Wel­come every­one to come and read and chat about those “use­less” booksauthor:Red Mud Study Group 
  It was three years ago (July 2009) that the inspec­tor and I ini­ti­at­ed the Red Mud Chil­dren’s Book Read­ing Group.The notice at that timeAs evi­dence. Over the past three years, the read­ing ses­sions at Red Mud Head­quar­ters have reached their fifth phase. We’ve also con­duct­ed sev­er­al ses­sions for ele­men­tary school read­ing teach­ers in Bei­jing and Hefei, and the results have exceed­ed our expec­ta­tions. In fact, for the inspec­tor and me, the read­ing ses­sions have been a tremen­dous help in our growth.

 
 
In the past, study ses­sions were pri­mar­i­ly held pri­vate­ly. While we did exten­sive prepa­ra­tion before­hand and often pro­duced fas­ci­nat­ing recaps and sum­maries after­ward, the rush of activ­i­ty often led to dis­cus­sions that were often lim­it­ed to casu­al emails. Look­ing back, there were count­less flash­es of bril­liant thought, and even more sol­id mate­r­i­al com­pi­la­tions, all qui­et­ly lost in the pas­sage of time.
 
 
 
So, I thought I could start to orga­nize it a lit­tle bit from now on, and every­one can post it in this blog when it is con­ve­nient. It will accu­mu­late slow­ly and per­haps pro­vide some help to more friends.

 
 
How­ev­er, I would like to remind you that the basic prin­ci­ples of the Red Mud Chil­dren’s Clas­sic Book Study Group remain con­sis­tent. In short, they are:Please try to read more “use­less” books with the men­tal­i­ty that “they may not be of any use”.If you can always read in this way (here we main­ly read clas­sic chil­dren’s books relat­ed to chil­dren), it will be easy to under­stand chil­dren, and it will also bring great help to your own life and the lives of those around you.

 
  A small inci­dent this morn­ing fur­ther deep­ened my belief. It’s quite fun­ny to think about it, so I want­ed to share it with you.

 
 
At 5:30 in the morn­ing, I woke up to cook noo­dles for my daugh­ter, as she had to go to school ear­ly (although I real­ly don’t under­stand why schools these days force chil­dren to arrive so ear­ly, ugh!). Her appetite was­n’t great so ear­ly, and she fin­ished half of her noo­dles before pack­ing up to go out. As she was stuff­ing her lunch bowl and spoon into her school bag, I saw a small bag of cook­ies she had baked her­self last night!Ha, that’s a great idea! Should I bring it to school and eat it slow­ly? She said no, but I could eat it on the sub­way and it would count as part of my break­fast.


 
 
After send­ing my daugh­ter out, I was sud­den­ly struck by emo­tion: What a won­der­ful child! She actu­al­ly baked her own cook­ies for break­fast! And, sur­pris­ing­ly, this was all thanks to her love of read­ing, which is also relat­ed to our Red Mud Chil­dren’s Clas­sic Book Study Group!


 
 
The rea­son is prob­a­bly like this: I don’t know when it start­ed, the Red Mud Chil­dren’s Book Study Group grad­u­al­ly devel­oped into a tea par­ty with fruits and snacks. Some chil­dren bought them, and some made them them­selves. One of the most pop­u­lar ones isPeach Blos­som SpringHome­made cook­ies. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, my daugh­ter was there dur­ing one of our cook­ie shar­ing ses­sions, and she raved about them, much to Aunt Tao Zhiyuan’s delight. The next time, she gave her some cook­ies and a copy of “Learn Bak­ing with Jun­zhi,” per­haps hop­ing Xiaoy­in’s moth­er would make some for her. But Xiaoy­in’s moth­er flipped through the book, feel­ing it was too dif­fi­cult for her, and set it aside (it was cer­tain­ly a dif­fi­cult book, in my opin­ion). Only then did my daugh­ter, then in fifth grade, dili­gent­ly flip through it, per­haps because she found the pic­tures so pleas­ing and sat­is­fy­ing. Ulti­mate­ly, the book was of lit­tle use to us, so it soon end­ed up on a shelf some­where.


 
 
Towards the end of this sum­mer vaca­tion, one day, we had too much milk at home, so I made apple pan­cakes based on the book “Apple Pan­cakes” by “Pasi the Rab­bit.” My daugh­ter enjoyed the pan­cakes and sud­den­ly thought, “Why not bake some cook­ies too?” I was ashamed to say that I did­n’t know how to make them. So she dug out the book from some­where.“Learn Bak­ing with Jun­zhi”, she read it with great inter­est, and then decid­ed to give it a try.


 
 
It was her first attempt at bak­ing, and with her moth­er’s help, the result was quite aver­age. How­ev­er, I think it was quite an under­tak­ing to bake it, and even though it was bare­ly edi­ble, it was still a high com­pli­ment.


 
  Lat­er, she tried it a sec­ond time and did it com­plete­ly by her­self, which was said to be very suc­cess­ful. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I was away on a busi­ness trip and was not at home.


 
 
Last night was the third time she made it, and she did it all her­self. We could­n’t even get in the way, but the aro­ma filled the house by the time it was done. I could­n’t resist try­ing a piece right away; it was tru­ly deli­cious! I scooped one up on a plate and gave it to her to con­grat­u­late her, but she was busy mem­o­riz­ing vocab­u­lary and did­n’t have time to pay atten­tion. Her expres­sion was so fun­ny, as if to say—of course it’s deli­cious!


 
 
This sto­ry seems to tell us: chil­dren who love read­ing will always find a way to make their lives sweet! Is that right? Maybe it can also tell us some­thing else…


 
 
Whether books are use­ful or use­less, only God knows. It’s best to read hap­pi­ly O(∩_∩)O Haha~


Ajia …
Writ­ten on a wicked Mon­day in Sep­tem­ber 2012
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