Investigate motives
Recently, Ms. Li from Tianjin reported to the reporter of "Rule of Law Daily": She recently bought several children's picture books for her young children. In the past few days, when she read a picture book called "×× Pig Snoring", she found that There is a problem with the story direction in it - because ×× pig was afraid that his snoring would affect his friends, he took out sleeping pills at night and woke up his sleeping friends. He said that I was afraid of disturbing you because of my snoring, so he took the sleeping pills. to avoid being affected.
The cover of the book says "Good Character Series".
"Isn't this inducing children to take sleeping pills? Is it a good character to take sleeping pills and fall asleep?" Ms. Li said angrily.
At the same time, she told reporters that in addition to problems with the content, the children's picture books she bought online also had problems such as poor printing quality and possible piracy. She hoped that the relevant departments would take action.
In this regard, reporters conducted investigative interviews.
□ Our reporter Zhang Shoukun
"Five poppies are so welcoming. Make friends and shake hands." This is a page of pictures from a children's picture book called "Listen, the bees are talking". Bees are surrounding the poppies, and a little girl is smiling. Smiling at the sight.
This is a children's picture book that a reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily" recently purchased online based on clues provided by a parent.
Looking through the catalog of the picture book, I found that it was a foreign picture book that was translated and published in 2017. It is currently sold by many merchants on e-commerce platforms.
"Such picture books are poisoning children." the above-mentioned parent said angrily.
In the past few days, reporters have interviewed dozens of parents in Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shaanxi and other places, and purchased nearly 30 children's picture books based on clues provided by parents, and found many problems.
The interviewed experts pointed out that it is necessary to strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights, intensify the crackdown on piracy, and at the same time strengthen supervision and review to eliminate low-quality and problematic picture books.
The characters are distorted and the picture is horrifying
There is a problem with content orientation
Ever since her one-year-old son showed a strong interest in picture books, Ms. Du from Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, had more and more picture books at home. She discovered a problem: the children in the pictures were clearly Chinese, but they had foreign names.
"I don't know what the author thinks. Anyway, I am disgusted with this phenomenon."
During the interview, many parents said that young children are like a blank sheet of paper, and children’s picture books are an important window for children to first learn about the world. However, some children’s picture books have strange styles, worship foreigners, glorify violence, and even contain drugs, pornography, etc. There are bad elements and orientation problems, many of which are translated foreign picture books, which seriously harm the physical and mental health of minors.
The reporter carefully browsed through the nearly 30 children's picture books purchased and found that there were indeed many such problems -
The first half of "The ××× Lives in My Heart" is full of bloody violence. One of the pages shows a very straightforward drawing of a humanoid monster with ears and sharp nails, covered in blood and stabbing its kind with a knife; There is a page depicting a group of small monsters stabbing the big monster lying on the ground with murderous weapons. Some stabbed the eyes, some cut the ankles, and the big monster kept spurting blood. The first sight gave people a strong shock and excitement. Discomfort.
"×× Can't", with a ferocious illustration style, shows the children doing bad things: eating soap, playing with knives, and going out naked, clearly demonstrating the dangerous details of the actions.
"This is very dangerous for young children who have strong curiosity and imitation ability." said a parent of a 4-year-old child in Beijing.
"If You Frequently ×××" is intended to teach children not to pick their noses, kick toys around, and brush their teeth frequently through various consequences, but the way it is expressed makes parents feel very horrified: once a certain bad habit occurs, the corresponding There were holes in the place, and the illustration later turned into the image of a child with holes all over his body and abnormal ears, nostrils, and fingers.
In order to cultivate her 3-year-old daughter's reading interest and thinking ability, Ms. Gao from Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province bought many picture books. She found that some picture books were too adult-oriented. For example, if two children play well, they are called boyfriend or girlfriend. , kissing the other person’s face to express happiness and gratitude, “I feel like I am teaching my children to fall in love.”
For example, Ms. Gao gave an example of a picture book called "××It's Okay". From beginning to end, it talks about a child crying because he can't be the first place, and then comforts the child not to be sad because he can't be the first place. Feeling downcast, feeling insignificant, and unable to find friends... "It seems okay at first, but when I think about it carefully, I feel like I have been emphasizing 'number one' to my children."
There is also a picture like this: watermelons commit collective suicide, and the moon looks at them indifferently; branches grow on the top of people's heads, and their whole faces are extremely distorted... Such captions: I want to peel off their skin and chop them off head; I will smash every bone of your disgusting body into pieces... On the Internet and complaint platforms, many parents complained about the problems of children's picture books, saying that such picture books are not suitable for young children at all.
Xi Peizhi, deputy secretary-general of the Juvenile Law Research Association of the Shanghai Law Society, said: "Children may not be able to fully understand the complex content in picture books, but they are very sensitive to pictures and colors, and will build up their understanding of the pictures by observing the pictures in the picture books. Cognition of the world. The colors, images and plots of picture books will directly affect children's emotions and psychology. Picture books with weird colors and curious content may bring unnecessary anxiety, fear or confusion to children. Some children may also Imitate it in your life, putting yourself and others at risk.”
Shoddy workmanship and low quality
Insufficient educational guidance
In addition to the above-mentioned guidance issues, many parents pointed out that the content of some children's picture books is shoddy, low-quality, and lacks correct educational guidance.
Ms. Du said that in some children's picture books, the characters have almost the same faces, with only different hairstyles and clothes, and they simply and crudely put together negative consequences and correct behaviors.
For example, in "The True Mistake of XX", the first part shows the various laziness of the protagonist, sleeping in, brushing his teeth and watching TV, catching butterflies and picking flowers on the way to school, etc. Only on the last page did he realize that he was late for class, so he thought to himself "next time" No more dawdling." The ending.
"It feels like it has no practical educational significance."
Ms. Liu, a parent from Tianjin, said that she bought a set of children's picture books to cultivate safety awareness some time ago. She felt that the author was very unprofessional. The original intention was to keep children away from possible dangers in life, but the whole set of books kept reading. Demonstrate dangerous actions.
"For example, the theme of one of the books is to educate children not to mistake medicines for candy, but the book introduces how the protagonist moves a small bench, climbs up, gets the plastic bottle, unscrews the bottle cap, and is surprised. There are many small things inside." "Jelly beans'..." Ms. Liu said that the picture book showed in detail how to take medicine and take medicine, but the more she read, the more something seemed wrong.
Ms. Lin from Nanjing, Jiangsu Province feels the same way.
"Some children's picture books are just make-up." She gave an example. She bought a picture book with a story about a small animal whose mother broke her lipstick and admitted her mistake. However, half of the picture book was about how her mother put on makeup. "Pat", "Tu Tu Tu", "Draw Hua Hua"... three words plus a picture, 6 pages are gone.
In addition, many parents interviewed pointed out that many children's picture books are purchased from online stores or while watching short videos. Some picture books are very cheap, but the quality is really unflattering and they are suspected of being pirated.
In February this year, Mr. Wang from Heze, Shandong Province, purchased a set of children's picture books online. Because the price was lower than in other stores, Mr. Wang also confirmed with the store whether it was genuine before purchasing. The store promised that the shipment would be genuine, but he received the picture book. Many problems were discovered later.
"From the appearance, the picture books on the merchant's promotional pictures are brightly colored, with obvious dividing lines, and obvious binding lines. However, the color dividing lines of the picture books received are not obvious, there are no binding lines, and they are bonded with glue. The white part of the paper The pattern on the back also shows through.”
Some insiders pointed out that low-quality picture books harm the health of minors.
Children, especially young children, come into contact with picture books not only by reading and looking at them, but also by touching and biting them. Therefore, genuine children's picture books often use coated paper, light paper, offset paper, etc. There are also certain requirements for the thickness of the paper, and inferior ones Pirated picture books cut corners and may not only use inferior ink containing excessive lead, but also often add a lot of fluorescent whitening agents, which is particularly harmful to children under 6 years old.
Xi Peizhi said that now that living conditions have improved, parents always want to give the best things to their children. As a tool for intellectual enlightenment, picture books have a strong market demand, and some unscrupulous businesses have taken a fancy to this "business opportunity" in order to pursue profits. Maximizing the production of children's picture books only as commodities and ignoring their educational and guiding properties leads to low content quality.
Some parents pointed out that some picture books are expensive, but the content is extremely "single". For example, the pictures are very simple and the text is only "um um ah eh", which is suspected of "cheating money".
Sun Hongyan, a researcher at the China Youth Research Center, believes that children’s picture books can improve children’s imagination and cultivate good reading habits. They are also a good medium for parent-child reading. Some picture books are well-made and the price is indeed relatively high, but they must not be simply based on the number of pages and Word count measures the value of a picture book.
Increase supervision and review efforts
Eliminate low-quality problematic picture books
Different parents may have different opinions on what kind of children's picture books are good picture books and what kind of children's picture books are problematic.
In Sun Hongyan's view, the production and distribution of children's picture books requires a deep understanding of the cognitive characteristics and psychological development patterns of early childhood. Otherwise, inappropriate picture books or even problematic picture books will easily appear.
For example, it is not suitable to talk about the topic of love in early childhood. It would be problematic if such content appears in picture books.
What standards should a picture book suitable for young children read have?
Zhang Dandan, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Hunan Normal University, believes that the following standards are indispensable—
"First of all, the most important thing is that this picture book must be children-oriented, conform to the reality of children's lives, and match their brain age development stage and information processing ability. Children are the future of the family and the motherland, and the picture book must have the correct characteristics. values. In addition, picture books should also be literary, which should be suitable for their age group and should be standardized written expressions." Zhang Dandan said that the pictures in picture books should be artistic. Some pictures, if most of them are ordinary, If people look at it and find it very ugly, then there must be something wrong with it, and children should avoid contact with it.
Zhang Dandan believes that a good children’s picture book should have a correct world view.
In the past, most children's books were text without many pictures. Children had a literacy threshold when reading books. But picture books help them solve this limitation, allowing children who are not yet literate to see with their eyes while their parents read picture books. Pictures, listening to stories with ears, to complete the preliminary understanding of the world, and gradually form a world view of how to become an excellent person in this era.
During the investigation, the reporter found that there are some foreign picture books on the market. Although some of them are well-known, some parents feel that they are not suitable for domestic children to read after buying them.
In this regard, Zhang Dandan said that my country has strict laws, regulations and industry guidance on the introduction of the publishing industry, but in practice it is inevitable that some picture books are introduced through informal channels, and relevant departments should strengthen supervision and law enforcement.
In addition, due to cultural differences, it does not mean that well-known picture books that have won international awards are necessarily suitable for domestic children. Readers from different countries may have different associations with the same thing and the same picture, so parents should choose picture books when choosing picture books. You also need to learn to distinguish when doing things, and don’t follow them blindly.
Regarding problematic picture books, Xi Peizhi believes that comprehensive measures are needed to control chaos. It is necessary to strengthen intellectual property protection, intensify the crackdown on piracy, crack down on the production and sales of pirated picture books, maintain normal market order, and increase supervision. and review efforts to prevent the circulation of picture books with low content quality and poor production materials.
Sun Hongyan suggested that attention should be paid to some blank spots or blind spots. For example, many low-quality pirated picture books have appeared on the Internet and e-commerce platforms, and crackdowns should be carried out. Parents should also be warned to actively reject pirated books for the sake of their children.
"Relevant departments and media should increase publicity efforts, raise people's awareness of prevention, refrain from purchasing low-quality and pirated picture books, and promote the healthy development of the book market." Zhang Dandan said.