Guide: Choose A Good Mandarin Picture Book For Children

Picture books are books for young children that combines easy and little word text with plenty of visual pictures to illustrate a story. In Mandarin, we call these books 图画书 (tú huàs hū)/ 绘本 (huì běn).

We highly recommend young children to start interacting with Chinese books with a picture book. We have also come up with a guide on various tips on how to choose a good mandarin picture book for a parent to find a great reader for their child!

The Picture Illustration

The number one important element to look for in the picture book is definitely the picture illustration. That’s why it is called ‘Picture Book’ after all. This is especially true for children from new-born all the way to four. Before children learn to read words, they ‘read’ pictures. Thus, illustration in the book should be large, easily understood and pleasing to see. Creatively using of bright colors and distinctive drawings also help to attract young children’s attention.

 The Story Content

A quick and accurate method to choose a picture book interesting content? Pick a simple book that interest you first, a good story that even the adult enjoys, high chance it will appeal to the little ones too! In addition, pick a story with a subject or character that your child shows interest in like the transport, animal kingdom, world of insects, or even a particular cartoon animation like Peppa Pig or Elsa.

Another key in picking a good story content is the relevancy to the child. Pick books that mimic events or include common daily routines of your child so they can easily relate and apply the words learned in their everyday life.

The Story Presentation

The next key element you would want to pay attention to is the presentation of the story. Now that you found a good story plot but we still need to ensure that the presentation of it is easy to understand for children and does not contain any misleading information for the child.

There is also this secret golden element that makes a good picture book stands out from the rest. That is a story plot that includes repetition. It can be a storyline with the same event happening repeatedly like 棕色的熊，棕色的熊，你在看什么 or it can also be a phrase of sentence that has been repeatedly mentioned throughout the book like 大卫，不可以.

With the above three most important keys covered, I’m confident that you are all prepared to go select a suitable picture book for your kid.  

Bonus add-ons for further reference:

• Make sure the picture book you pick is Age-appropriate
• Good to have some conversational sentences
• A story that conveys a positive concept

Last Updated: 8th May 2020

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