Better books for children
China Daily  Updated: 2005-06-02 06:09

Chinese children should be given easy access to more informative and well-written books, says an article in Workers' Daily. An excerpt follows:

Books are regular choices for International Children's Day gifts. However, more and more Chinese parents are complaining about the scarcity of good books for children in today's book market.

They are nagging about the packaging of books, which are often gaudily coloured. China's book market is over-run by too many costly hardcover books so parents have to pay extra money to buy them. They are not paying for the book's content, but for its unnecessarily deluxe cover.

Many children's books are no longer as informative and original as they used to be. The publishers want to make easy money - they just copy some poems, fairy tales or science fiction stories from former publications, do some editing, paste them on to their work and then they say they have a new book. There are fewer original works, let alone innovative and interesting ones.

Foreign stories have marched quietly onto children's bookshelves and they are gaining more popularity among Chinese young readers. We cannot deny the fact that some of the imported works are better than ours, but isn't it a pity that our children can only name Japanese and American cartoon figures?

Some story books are not readable. Children's books should be written in children's own language and the content should be close to their lives.

Children's books are also accused of sometimes leading their young readers astray. These books are advocating too much pop culture and violence, which sometimes corrupts children's way of thinking and behaviour.

Book publishers as well as book writers should increase their efforts to improve the overall quality of children's books.

(China Daily 06/02/2005 page4)

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