I work in publishing, and tangentially with children's books published inside and outside of China. My main observation is that the Chinese market for children's books (read: parents) is totally uninterested in books produced in China. 99% of children's books published in China are imported and translated from other countries, mostly the US.<p>In other words, the (politically-influenced) Chinese publishing industry is producing didactic children's books, but Chinese consumers are not interested in those books at all.
I’m French, but spent a portion of my childhood living in the USA (South Carolina) due to my father’s work.<p>The one thing that my extremely French parents couldn’t stop making fun of at the time, and still can’t stop making fun of now 20 years later, is the American habit of praising children repeatedly, putting stickers on homework, giving participation ribbons for every event, etc.<p>It was actually an interesting dichotomy: I’d get my homework back from the teacher with it saying “Great job!” with a cute little star sticker, and then at home my mom would get mad at me because she thought I made dumb mistakes and would make me do it all over again.<p>Definitely a strong contrast between French and American values in schooling, at least in the 90s. I’m left handed, and in the 2nd grade I had a teacher who would tear apart any piece of paper I gave her that had any ink smudge on it (fountain pens are mandatory in French grade school - which also confused my parents when we moved to the US and I was expected to write everything in pencil) and make me do it all over again. I do have really neat handwriting now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯<p>15 years later, as a grad student in the US, teachers I TA’d for repeatedly told me I was too harsh in my grading and that I shouldn’t take off points for small mistakes, typos, etc. That’s another big difference between French and US schooling: in France, you’re graded out of 20; but at the high school/college level, if you have an average above 15/20, you’re most certainly in the top of your class. In fact, in some top tier universities the class average might be 8/20. In grad school in the US, I had a 90%+ average, and routinely got 100% on tests - something just completely foreign to me.
As someone with a kid in China, kids TV is <i>far</i> more formative than books. Why? Books in Chinese are not read by kids, they are read by parents since it is impossible to learn enough Chinese characters to achieve literacy while young! In my observation, most Chinese parents are very busy and do not spend much time reading with their kids.
I cannot talk about China, but in Germany the classic children's book "Der Struwwelpeter" is to my knowledge still quite popular and often read to children:<p>German original:
> <a href="http://sternchenland.com/downloads/unsortiertes/Der%20Struwwelpeter%20-%20Heinrich%20Hofmann.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://sternchenland.com/downloads/unsortiertes/Der%20Struww...</a><p>English translation
> <a href="https://archive.org/details/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich</a><p>(note that you should prefer to read this in German if you can, since lots of subtleties are lost in the English adaption).<p>Here is a movie adaption of this book (in German) - note that they added an epilogue at the end where all stories still come to a happy end:<p>> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpcPz-GvHYI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpcPz-GvHYI</a><p>In particular consider the third ("Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug"/"The dreadful story about Harriet and the matches"; 16:54 in the video) and the sixth ("Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher"/"The story of little thumb-a-suck"; 13:38 in the video) story to see why this might be somewhat different from what I consider as a typical US-American children's book from my non-US perspective. :-)
My experience being a father is that children aquire and consume vast amounts of books. They reread them until they understand them and then they either discard them and never touch them again or they like them and keep reading them. I haven't been able to see a simple thematic pattern for my daughter but what I did notice us that she really hates it when you try to read books she but in the discard pile. I am quite sure that she would loose her intrest in books if I kept taking books she didn't like.<p>Instead I let her dicide what she wants and hope that this will let her develop and refine her taste.<p>I guess what I'm trying to say is that i suspect top down government of children's books will backfire in diminished interest and cruder taste for culture.
<i>Cheung notes that children in China consistently score higher on academic tests compared to children in the U.S. and Mexico.</i><p>If we’re going to play this game, which culture’s children’s books teach kids more about honesty, I wonder?<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-fraud-scandals.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-...</a><p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/how-sophisticated-test-scams-from-china-are-making-their-way-into-the-us/474474/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/how-so...</a>
> The Foolish Old Man Who Removed The Mountain<p>This is a real story in India - <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi</a><p>There is also a good movie made on him - <a href="http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3449292/" rel="nofollow">http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3449292/</a>
<i>...generally viewing intelligence as a trait that can be acquired through hard work rather than a quality that you're born with.</i><p>The first thing that came to mind when I read this was Lysenko-ism.
<i>Ostensibly it's about a cat that has an appetite for sloppy letters — "written too large or too small, or if the letter is missing a stroke,"</i><p><i>But the underlying point is clear: "This is really instilling the idea of effort — that children have to learn to consistently practice in order to achieve a certain level,"</i><p>My take on the underlying point of that story is quite different: conform or be exterminated.
This article annoyed me the last time I ran into it because when they go into possible effects they point to test scores to try and quantify the effect of dedication oriented children's stories but go to no effort to try and quantify the effect of happiness oriented children's stories despite it would be quite easy to note suicide is almost twice as common in china vs the united states.
> Cheung notes that children in China consistently score higher on academic tests compared to children in the U.S. and Mexico<p>But I doubt this is because of books. After all, children of chinese descent consistently score higher on academic tests everywhere in the world, including the U.S.<p>The elephant in the room is that ethnic chinese children have got more of what it takes, <i>conditio sine qua non</i>, to score high on academic tests.