Thursday, April 30, 2015

DinoBoy's Chinese Book Recommendation #1 春华童书·“大头儿子”系列 - 总是有办法

Note :  This is not a sponsored post.  DinoBoy's Chinese language standard is not as great as I wanted him to be nor is it as good as his English language.  Since he started his primary school journey I have pushed doubly hard on introducing more Chinese story books to him and ensuring that he read much more Chinese story books than before.  Since many parents have voiced out that their kids are struggling with the language, I thought I'd share the books that I exposed DinoBoy to since day one in primary school. I hope these books will help parents choose the ones that are suitable for their kids' reading level and eventually help them conquer Chinese.  

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I love how our library try to introduce books to patrons in a convenient way.  For my neghbourhood's library there is this shelf near the Borrowing Station where they will place books of different genre for both adults and kids.  Couple of months ago while DinoBoy was busy checking out the books at the Borrowing Station I was browsing at the Recommendations shelf and saw this book. I took it up to check it out and it ended into our pile of books that we borrowed that night.


Ok I admit that I'm a visual creature, its in the blood not my fault, anyway as I flipped the pages and admiring the illustrations I get more exited.  The illustrations are so whimsical, lifelike and full of facial expressions that depicts the character's mood in the story.  These are the kind of illustrations that I like because it draws me to not only read the book but study the characters while reading the story.  

And since DinoBoy is some what a visual creature too, again through no fault of mine lol, I noticed that illustrations help him to get connected to the story because he still have trouble recognizing some Chinese characters and understanding their meaning.


Anyway, another reason why I like this book is because it consist of short stories (max 4 pages) of interesting title but with simple and lively story line, the words the author used are easy to understand too.

The characters has no name, instead they have nicknames; 大头儿子 Big Head Son, 小头爸爸 Small Head Dad, 大大叔 Big Big Uncle.小眼睛 Small Eyes and 胖外婆 Plump Grandma etc. DinoBoy finds their name very funny and wants to read more about their story.

With the help of the hanyupinyin above each words, DinoBoy was able to pronounce the new words he encountered while reading, after that I will either explain to him the meaning of the words or he will look up in the Chinese dictionary later.  There are many idioms, adjectives and descriptive words in this book and by pronouncing it out himself and learning its meaning it some how helps to register them in DinoBoy's head.  Here's some examples;

她先倒一杯递给大头儿子,谁知小眼睛却又对着绿茶打起喷嚏 :啊嚏!啊嚏!弄得那位小姐进退两难。

胖外婆包的粽子大大的、鼓鼓的,那是给大头儿子吃的;大头儿子包的粽子小小的、紧紧的,那是给谁吃的呀?

The recommended age for this book as stated in dangdang is for 7 to 10 years old but it's a little bit challenging for DinoBoy for him to read alone, I have to read it out with him but he understands the story well.  If your child is good in Chinese he will definitely enjoy reading the many adventures Big Head son had with Small Eyes.


I googled about this book and found out that the author is from China and the characters are based on a typical China modern family.  There is another book to this "Big Head Son" or “大头儿子”series, its "我们一起哈哈笑".  This author has other series of books too, “米球球”系列, “卷毛头”系列, which you can easily find them from online shops such as dangdang or taobao by these words or  “春华童书” as keywords to search.

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内容推荐
本书是“春华童书”“大头儿子”系列中的一本。“大头儿子”是著名儿童文学作家郑春华创作的一个系列故事,这个系列故事围绕着大头儿子这个主人公,描述了发生在他身边的各种各样或好玩、或有趣的故事,非常适合低幼儿童阅读。整部作品体现出了作者一贯的轻松、快乐而温馨的风格。

《春华童书·“大头儿子”系列·总是有办法》包括“大头儿子和隔壁大大叔”的故事和“大头儿子和胖胖的外婆”的故事。《春华童书·“大头儿子”系列·总是有办法》为彩图注音读物。

作者简介
郑春华,著名儿童文学作家,中国作家协会会员,在儿童文学创作领域成绩卓著。著有《紫罗兰幼儿园》、《贝加的樱桃班》、《大头儿子和小头爸爸》、《非常小子马鸣加》等多部作品,曾荣获“冰心儿童图书奖”、“全国优秀少儿读物一等奖”、“国家图书奖提名奖”等多项国家级奖项。

基本信息
出版社: 少年儿童出版社; 第1版 (2012年5月1日)
丛书名: 春华童书·"大头儿子"系列
平装: 80页
读者对象: 7-10岁
语种: 简体中文
开本: 16
ISBN: 7532490246, 9787532490240
条形码: 9787532490240



2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a cute book! Thanks for sharing, Jen. No doubt, the HYPY would surely be useful for ME!

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    1. I used to NOT like books with HYPY because I'd rather DinoBoy learn the words then rely on HYPY to read the words. However I soon realized that he can't do that because the school teachers them HYPY first and so the so call habit was instilled already.

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