Writing came into being along with the process of civilization. The three oldest writing systems in the world: cuneiform writing, ancient Egyptian holy script writing, and Chinese oracle bone writing. Except for Chinese characters, which have been inherited from oracle bone inscriptions, the other two characters have disappeared in the long river of history with the demise of culture.
Chinese characters are a unique symbol, a beautiful language, a unique art, and contain rich cultural connotations.
According to legend, the Yellow Emperor in ancient times had a historian named Cangjie. This man had four eyes and was very smart. So when he saw traces of birds and animals, he was inspired to create characters. "The sky rains millet and the ghosts cry at night", this is the "Cangjie coined character" that has been circulated since the end of the Warring States Period.
Chinese characters have evolved over thousands of years from the original oracle bone inscriptions, to bronze inscriptions, to Warring States characters, to seal scripts, to official scripts, and to the regular scripts that we mostly use now. In the long history, although some Chinese characters have been far removed from their original images, they still retain the soul of hieroglyphs, and there is still a certain relationship between the characters and the things themselves.
Among the characters currently in use in the world, only Chinese characters have the characteristics of phonetics, meanings, and pictograms, reflecting the long history and profound cultural heritage of the Chinese nation.
"Super Interesting Chinese Character Storybook" is compiled by Chen Jialing, a Ph.D. from Taiwan Normal University. It is based on "Shuowen Jiezi" and selects 152 modern common Chinese characters to introduce China's oracle bone inscriptions and golden characters. It traces the past and present life of Chinese characters, and uses interesting stories to cultivate the thinking of Chinese characters, so that children can understand how traditional culture evolves step by step, adapts to the development of the times, and how to inherit the tradition reasonably. .
Each Chinese character has its own history, its own tradition, and its own evolution process. After reading this book, children will find that Chinese characters are so interesting!
(1) The content is lively and the form is diverse
The author himself is Taiwanese and has read some children's works written by Taiwanese writers. The sense of humor is fully demonstrated. The same is true for the book "Super Interesting Chinese Character Storybook". Some groups, such as "Beautiful Chinese Characters", "Sporty Chinese Characters", "Funny Chinese Characters", etc. are very interesting, and readers can't help but want to find out.
In addition, the specific content is very advanced with the times. Many new words at this stage are used in the book and extended as small points of interest. It is very fun to read and can attract children's curiosity. , which is also difficult for many traditional authors to achieve.
Take the word "thunder" for example. In the past few years, words such as "thunder" and "thunder rolling" appeared on the Internet. This kind of word appears a lot every year. When it first appeared, it was difficult even for people like us who are not very old to understand it, let alone explain it to our children. Here the author explains the past and present life of "Thunder", and also explains that the current meaning of "Thunder" on the Internet is "fright". There is also an ancient Chinese character "鐐" that new humans use to express being frightened.
Similarly, there are explanations of the words "囧", "ASH" and "Qian", etc., which are very interesting and allow readers to learn a lot of history, culture and written knowledge without knowing it.
(2) The binding is exquisite and in line with children's reading aesthetics
"Super Interesting Chinese Character Storybook" is exquisitely bound. I was very surprised when I first got the book. I did not expect this book. To be able to do it so beautifully.
The cover is composed of hieroglyphics, forming a simple but artistic painting, which looks very comfortable. The paper used for the book cover is very thick and slightly wrinkled. It feels very good and has a heavy history when you hold it in your hand.
In terms of content arrangement, the whole book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter is divided into several small units. Each small unit is a group of four characters, which is a theme, such as "Plant Chinese Characters", "Natural Chinese Characters", etc.
Each word is divided into two pages. The first page introduces the origin of the word, what it means in ancient times, what changes have occurred in the process of historical evolution, and all-encompassing astronomy, geography, plants, animals, and humanities knowledge. . The introduction of each character is not long, but it can be seen the breadth and depth of the author's research. Without a deep theoretical foundation, it is impossible to introduce the past and present life of a character in such a comprehensive way in such a short space.
Finally, each character has a "Did you know" link, which supplements the relevant knowledge and cultural common sense of the character, which is equivalent to an extended reading of the character. The content of this part includes official history, Legends, folktales, geography, and characters are all-inclusive. Each story is also equipped with exquisite illustrations. The content of the illustrations is closely related to the Chinese characters to be introduced. When reading, the Chinese language, traditional Chinese aesthetics, and It’s a very good way to expand your knowledge.
(3) Starting from the evolution process of Chinese characters, systematically understand Chinese characters
"Super Interesting Chinese Character Storybook" starts from the original meaning and evolution process of Chinese characters, and introduces the origin of Chinese characters. In this life, this is a very effective way to understand Chinese characters.
When I got this book, my child happily told me that they also had similar ancient Chinese characters in their writing textbooks. She had to read and write about it every time, but she didn’t Know what it means.
This involves the current method of educating children to read Chinese characters. Schools and parents only ask children to pay attention to how to write and read Chinese characters. As for how this character came into being and what its origin is, it is very simple. Less involved. This also makes children feel uninterested and makes Chinese language boring and difficult to learn.
When our children learn to read, we consciously tell them the production process of each word, the origin of its meaning, and how to remember it more conveniently. When we go to the museum, when we see oracle bone inscriptions, we read them together. Can you recognize which Chinese characters those oracle bone inscriptions correspond to today? Personally, I think that when educating children, explaining the production process of each character, its ancient meaning, modern meaning, and writing method are very helpful for systematically mastering Chinese characters. However, due to limited knowledge, many times it is just a superficial introduction. But this book is different. Under the doctor's explanation, every word seems to come alive in front of the children, making friends with the children and allowing them to understand Chinese characters clearly.
Take "mother" as an example. This character is formed by adding two dots to the character "female" in Oracle bone script, which represents the image of mother. Later, hairpins were added to the head in bronze inscriptions, and the kneeling and sitting strokes in the writing form of the Warring States period, seal script, and official script were all removed, and eventually evolved into the current character "mother".
At the same time, the "Flower of Mother" was introduced, telling the children how worried mothers are about their children traveling far away, and how rare mother's love is. Remember your mother's kindness and be kind to her throughout your life.
In this way, children can draw inferences from one example while learning Chinese characters, and at the same time, they can learn about traditional Chinese culture through Chinese characters, which is very consistent with the current educational orientation.
(4) Find the link between "children's thinking" and "Chinese character thinking"
Chinese characters are a unique type of writing of the Chinese nation. The structure is derived from graphics and is the understanding of our ancestors. A kind of understanding and thinking about nature, the world, and philosophy. Therefore, from the shape and structure of Chinese characters, if you are careful, you can often find some understanding between Chinese characters and the surrounding environment. This is called Chinese character thinking.
But for children, they are still more good at image thinking, and they only know what they mean when they see specific things. It is often difficult to accept abstract things cognitively. If you can pass on the correct "Chinese character thinking" to your children and "teach them to fish", then you will have enough awareness of independent learning in future studies, be able to understand more words, and have a great impact on Chinese learning. great interest, thus generating a positive feedback.
So how to open up the link between "children's thinking" and "Chinese character thinking"? "Super Interesting Chinese Character Storybook" gives a good answer.
The book creates a good context. Through hieroglyphs, stories, and pictures, children can combine words with specific situations. In this way, through constant repetition, Guide children to touch the thinking of Chinese characters, explore the beauty behind Chinese characters, relate configurations and meanings, inspire thoughts through interesting stories, and find the link between "children's thinking" and "Chinese character thinking".
This cognitive process is also in line with the child's psychological growth process. From image thinking to abstract thinking requires a process and corresponding scenes. If it is simply memorized by rote, the effect will definitely be unsatisfactory. .
If you think about it carefully, it is not only Chinese language, but also any subject related to cognition. Only by understanding the causes and consequences of knowledge points can we integrate them and connect all the knowledge together to form our own system, which will eventually become inseparable shining points in our thinking.
There was a question in Zhihu before. What is the biggest difference between foreign textbooks and Chinese textbooks? A very important point mentioned is that foreign textbooks are very "verbose" to read. They assume that you don't know anything and need to understand everything. They break down the knowledge points and talk about them repeatedly, and finally enter the high school smoothly. One stage of learning. And this kind of "verbosity" is actually exactly what our current education needs. "Super Interesting Chinese Character Storybook" is very consistent with this kind of thinking to some extent, and can also be used as a very good supplementary teaching material for children's spare time learning.
Chen Yinke, a master of Chinese studies, said: "According to today's exegetical standards, any explanation of a word is a cultural history." This may sound a bit exaggerated to ordinary people, but Chinese language and literature , the charm of Chinese characters is universally recognized, and the depth of Chinese characters is unparalleled. It can be said that it has thousands of meanings and endless mysteries.
The traditional culture of the Chinese nation and the supreme wisdom of the Yan and Huang ancestors are contained in the configuration of each Chinese character.
Each word and story can make children feel that our country's Chinese characters are so charming, our country's culture is so profound, our country is picturesque, and the Chinese characters we write are picturesque!