Thanks so much for your wonderful story! It's so encouraging!

Somehow I had similar frustration as many oversea Chinese parents in terms of finding high quality Chinese children books for my two girls. They tend to get attracted more by the English ones. Maybe because the English ones tend to have age-appropriate stories (or at least easy for us oversea Chinese to find) and tend to write from the kids' angle (like Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bonnie, If you give a mouse a cookie, If you give a pig a pancake, Five little monkeys jumping on the bed, Five little monkeys doing nothing...). The Chinese ones I have (Yin1Er2Hua4Bao4 and others) tend to write from the adults' angle - trying too hard on preaching certain values.

Now I am trying to build more confidence in Chinese reading. Last week I started playing a tape of Tang2Shi1 (Poems from the Tang Dynasty) for kids while driving my 2.5-year-old Chihan to and from her preschool. It was triggered by reading about positive effects of learning and memorizing Tang2She1 at very early age. First of all, memorizing skills are among the few skills that influenced more from after-birth training than genetic effect (40 & 60% split) according to the research quoted in the wonderful book “What's Going on in There? : How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life”. The more practice one gets early on, the better memorizing skill one would acquire later in life. Secondly, poems have very positive effects on promoting imagination in children besides their language beauty. Children’s imagination is so precious that it needs our careful nurturing before we and the society shower them with overwhelming information which tend to suppress their imagination. Coincidently a good friend of mine from high school years mailed me a wonderful book of Tang2She1 for children with colorful drawings his father bought for my two girls before he came to visit her one month ago. So I placed on her high chair so our kids’ nanny would read to her sometimes during the breakfast. Now only after a week, she recited the wonderful poem “Chun1Xiao3” this morning. I guess it’s because it’s on the cover of that book and it is also one of poems recited on the tape. I am just thrilled with this positive development since I almost gave up on Chinese reading two months ago. Many thanks to the wonderful posts on this subject from many of you, especially lady lotus - the mother of two lovely young “poets”. I will keep my expectation very low hoping she will keep enjoying listening and reciting many more beautiful poems.

If any of you have positive experiences in getting your kids love reading Chinese books, kindly share with the rest of us. Any recommendations on good Chinese books that have worked for your kids would be greatly appreciated. Kindly share the title of the book, its publisher, for what age group and where you bought it. Many thanks in advance!

Below is another wonderful post on getting kids to love reading in general.
http://web.????/BBSView.php?SubID=znjy_best&MsgID=3075

Happy reading!

Below is some reports/feedback from a dear friend of mine after she attended last month event at our Parents and Children Education Club, a local club here in NJ. http://pceclub.org/v-web/portal/73/index.php. If any of you live in NJ or nearby states, please come and join us at our annual parenting conference on August 27, http://pceclub.org/v-web/portal/73/cap2005/about.php
It was last year’s 1st parenting conference where I got to know this club and benefit a lot from the fellow parents there.

For the June monthly education seminar, we were much honored to have Ms. Yuanhua Liu, ex Associate Editor-in-chief of China Youth Publishing House to give us a seminar on "How to Make your Children Enjoy Reading". Ms. Liu has more than 30 years of experience in editing children's literature, and has accumulated invaluable first-hand experience and knowledge.

Dear There,

I love the discussion on reading to kids. I've learned so much. But when thinking of reading kids Chinese, I have a mixed feeling. On one hand, I want my kids to feel "close" to China and Chinese culture. However, we have many Chinese books brought to us from China. Too bad they are not "pre-qualified" carefully. Both my husband and I felt very reluctant to read them to kids. I hear similar experience expressed by many other parents too.

But after Ms. Lou's seminar, I bought a few Chinese Phrases (Chen2 Yu3) and Mythology (Yu4 Yan2) published by The Children's Publishing House, as Ms. Liu said the publisher is very key in ensuring a good selection of contents.

To my surprise, my kids (<6yr) enjoy them. And I starts to taste a few benefits of reading good traditional Chinese materials to kids.
1. Enrich their Chinese vocabulary: Those books have very beautifully written language -- simple, precise and with a good rhythm. Much richer than our daily home spoken Chinese. I cannot make up language that well.
2. Cultivate their understanding and appreciation of Chinese culture - Our ancient literature contains a great deal of wisdom, naturally taught through stories, such as, "Yu2 Gong1 Yi2 Shan1" (The fool elder moves the mountain), "Zhao1 San1 Mu4 Si4" (3 in the miring and 4 in the evening). They combine human and fairies, nature and spirit, imagination and philosophy all together. Very attractive to kids. I am thinking they plant a good seed in our little ones' heart to appreciate their "root".

So, publisher, language, picture are still the most important things in selecting what to read to kids in Chinese. I am in love with the Children's Publishing House (Shao4 er2 Chu1 Ban3 She4) for now. I went through some Chinese picture books I don't like, they are from publishing houses I never heard of before. Hope this can be a useful tip to others too.

More on English books:

Hi There,

From our 23rd event, I learned about two awards for children's book. Many thanks to Ms. Liu talk.

The Caldecott Medal goes to children's book (mostly picture books) for young kids. I borrowed a few from the library and really enjoyed them with my two girls (5 1/2 and 4). You should see three of us sitting on the stairs, reading and smiling to each other the parts that we all understand. I also noticed that kids appreciate the illustration better than I do.
http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=bookmediaawards&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=93447

Newbery Medal is another one introduced at our 23rd seminar. It's for older readers, such as kids in the 5th grade. Someone might want to experience them and share with us. I will stay slow paced, currently at 6yr-old level :-)

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=bookmediaawards&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=96130

When I talked with the librarians about the medal book lists, they were very delighted, and reached out of their way to help introducing good books they and their kids used to enjoy so much. I started to feel less disoriented among shelves of children books. Learning something new everyday.

Happy reading!
ChiuLan