Recently, Ms. Li from Tianjin reported to a reporter from Legal Daily: Not long ago, she bought several children's picture books for her young child. A few days ago, when reading a picture book titled "×× Pig Snores," she found that the story's orientation had problems—because ×× Pig was afraid that his snoring during sleep would affect his friends, at night he took out sleeping pills and shook awake the friends who were already asleep, saying, I'm afraid my snoring will disturb you, so take sleeping pills to avoid being affected. Yet the book's cover bears "Good Character Series."

　　"Isn't this inducing children to take sleeping pills! Taking sleeping pills to fall asleep is a good character?" Ms. Li said rather angrily. At the same time, she told the reporter that in addition to content problems, the children's picture books she bought online also had problems such as poor printing quality and possible piracy, and she hoped relevant departments would rectify the situation.

　　In response, the reporter conducted an investigation and interview.

　　"Five poppies are really enthusiastic; let's make friends and shake hands." This is a page of text and illustration in a children's picture book titled "Listen, the Bees Are Talking," in which bees surround poppy flowers while a little girl looks at the scene with a smile.

　　This is a children's picture book that a Legal Daily reporter recently bought online based on a clue provided by a parent. Checking the book's cataloging data, it is a foreign picture book, translated and published in 2017, and it is currently sold by multiple merchants on e-commerce platforms.

　　"Such picture books are poisoning children," the parent said indignantly.

　　Over the past days, the reporter interviewed dozens of parents in Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shaanxi and other places, and based on clues provided by the parents purchased nearly 30 children's picture books, finding quite a few problems. Interviewed experts pointed out that intellectual property protection should be strengthened, efforts to crack down on piracy increased, and supervision and review simultaneously strengthened to eliminate low-quality and problematic picture books.

　　Distorted Characters and Thrilling Images

　　Problems with Content Orientation

　　Ever since her son, just over one year old, showed strong interest in picture books, the number of picture books in the home of Ms. Du in Changzhou, Jiangsu, has kept increasing. She found a problem: the pictures clearly show Chinese children, yet they are given foreign names. "I don't know what the author was thinking; anyway, I am very averse to this phenomenon."

　　In interviews, multiple parents expressed this: young children are like a blank sheet of paper, and children's picture books are an important window for children's first understanding of the world. Yet some children's picture books have bizarre styles, worship foreign things, glorify violence, and even contain drugs, pornography and other harmful elements, with orientation problems. Many of them are translated foreign picture books, seriously harming the physical and mental health of minors.

　　The reporter carefully leafed through the nearly 30 children's picture books purchased and indeed found many such problems—

　　In "××× Living in My Heart," the first half is filled with bloody violence. One page very bluntly depicts a humanoid monster with ears and sharp nails, covered in blood, stabbing its own kind with a knife; another page shows a group of little monsters stabbing a large monster lying on the ground with weapons, some gouging its eyes, some cutting its ankles, with blood constantly spraying from the large monster's body. A single glance brings strong shock and discomfort.

　　In "×× Cannot," the illustration style is hideous, showing a child learning bad behavior: eating soap, playing with knives, going out naked, demonstrating dangerous details and actions clearly. "For young children with strong curiosity and imitation ability, this is very dangerous," said a parent of a 4-year-old in Beijing.

　　"If You Often ×××" was intended to teach children through various consequences not to pick their noses, kick toys around, and to brush their teeth diligently, but the presentation makes parents feel very horrified: once there is a bad habit, the corresponding place rots into a hole, and later the illustrations become the image of a child covered in holes, with abnormal ears, nostrils and fingers.

　　To cultivate her 3-year-old daughter's interest in reading and thinking ability, Ms. Gao in Xi'an, Shaanxi, bought many picture books. She found that some picture books are too adult-oriented; for example, two children who get along well call each other boyfriend and girlfriend and kiss each other's faces to express happiness and gratitude. "It feels like teaching children to date."

　　Ms. Gao gave another example: a picture book titled "×× It's Okay" from beginning to end tells of a child crying and making a fuss because he cannot be first, then comforts the child not to be sad, depressed, feel small, or unable to find friends because he cannot be first... "At first glance there's no problem, but on careful thought, it feels like constantly emphasizing 'first place' to children."

　　There are also images like this: watermelons collectively committing suicide while the moon looks on indifferently; tree branches growing from a person's head, with the whole face extremely distorted... and captions like this: I want to skin them and cut off their heads; I will smash every bone of your loathsome body into pieces... On the internet and complaint platforms, many parents complain about problems in children's picture books, saying such picture books are simply unsuitable for young children.

　　Xi Peizhi, deputy secretary-general of the Juvenile Law Research Association of the Shanghai Law Society, said: "Young children may not fully understand the complex content in picture books, but they are very sensitive to pictures and colors and will build their cognition of the world by observing the pictures in picture books. The colors, images and plots of picture books directly affect young children's emotions and psychology. Picture books with bizarre colors and novelty-seeking content may bring unnecessary anxiety, fear or confusion to young children, and some children may imitate them in life, causing danger to themselves and others."

　　Crude Production and Low Quality

　　Insufficient Educational and Guiding Role

　　In addition to the above orientation problems, many parents pointed out that some children's picture books have crude content and low quality, lacking a correct educational and guiding role.

　　Ms. Du said that in some children's picture books, the characters' faces look almost identical, differing only in hairstyle and clothes, and negative consequences and correct behavior are simply and crudely pieced together. For example, in "×× Really Delays Things," the first part entirely shows the protagonist's various laziness—sleeping in, watching TV while brushing teeth, chasing butterflies and picking flowers on the way to school—and only on the last page is it revealed that he is late for class, ending with the thought "I won't dawdle next time." "It feels like there's no real educational significance."

　　Ms. Liu, a parent from Tianjin, said that some time ago she bought a set of children's picture books to cultivate safety awareness and felt the author was very unprofessional. The intention was to keep children away from dangers they may encounter in life, but the whole set kept demonstrating dangerous actions.

　　"For example, one of them has the theme of teaching children not to mistake medicine for candy, but the book introduces how the protagonist moves a small stool, climbs up, gets a plastic bottle, unscrews the cap, and is pleasantly surprised to find lots of little 'candy beans' inside..." Ms. Liu said the picture book shows in detail how to get and take medicine, and the more you read, the more wrong it feels.

　　Ms. Lin in Nanjing, Jiangsu, felt the same. "Some children's picture books are just filler." She gave an example: she bought a story picture book whose protagonist is a small animal that breaks its mother's lipstick and voluntarily admits the mistake. However, half of the picture book is about how the mother does her makeup—"pat pat pat," "apply apply apply," "draw draw draw"... three characters plus one picture, and six pages are gone.

　　In addition, multiple interviewed parents said that many children's picture books are ordered from online stores or while scrolling short videos. Some picture books are very cheap, but the quality is truly hard to praise, and there is suspicion of piracy.

　　In February this year, Mr. Wang in Heze, Shandong, bought a set of children's picture books online. Because the price was lower than other stores, Mr. Wang confirmed with the seller before purchase whether they were genuine, and the seller promised to ship genuine copies. However, after receiving the picture books, he found many problems. "From the appearance, in the merchant's promotional pictures the picture books are brightly colored with obvious dividing lines, and obvious binding lines can be seen, but the received picture books have no obvious color boundaries, no binding lines, are glued together, and the white parts of the paper show the patterns from the back."

　　An industry insider pointed out that low-quality picture books harm the physical health of minors. Children, especially young children, contact picture books not only by reading and looking but also by touching and biting. Therefore, genuine children's picture books often use coated paper, light paper, offset paper, etc., and have certain requirements for paper thickness. In contrast, inferior pirated picture books cut corners, may not only use inferior ink with excessive lead content but often also add large amounts of fluorescent whitening agents, which is especially harmful to children under 6.

　　Xi Peizhi said that living conditions are better now, and parents always want to give their children the best. Picture books, as tools for intellectual enlightenment, are in strong market demand, and some unscrupulous merchants have seized this "business opportunity." To maximize profits, they treat children's picture books merely as commodities for production, ignoring their educational and guiding attributes, resulting in low content quality.

　　Some parents also pointed out that some picture books are expensive but extremely "simple" in content—for example, the pictures are very simple and the text is just a few words like "mm ah yi"—and there is suspicion of "scamming money." Sun Hongyan, a researcher at the China Youth and Children Research Center, believes that children's picture books can improve children's imagination, cultivate good reading habits, and are also a very good medium for parent-child reading. Some picture books are exquisitely made and indeed quite expensive, but the value of picture books absolutely cannot be measured simply by page count and word count.

　　Strengthen Supervision and Review

　　Eliminate Low-Quality and Problematic Picture Books

　　What kind of children's picture books are good and what kind are problematic may be viewed differently by different parents.

　　In Sun Hongyan's view, producing and distributing children's picture books requires an in-depth understanding of young children's cognitive characteristics and psychological development laws; otherwise, unsuitable or even problematic picture books easily appear. For example, early childhood is not suitable for discussing romance, and it is problematic if such content appears in picture books.

　　What standards should picture books suitable for young children meet? Zhang Dandan, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of Hunan Normal University, believes the following standards are indispensable—

　　"First, the most important thing is that the picture book must be child-appropriate, conform to children's actual lives, and match their brain age development stage and information-processing ability. Children are the future of the family and the country, and picture books must have correct values. In addition, picture books should have literary quality, which should be suitable for their age and be standardized written expression." Zhang Dandan said that the pictures in picture books should be artistic. If most ordinary people find some pictures very ugly, then there must be a problem, and children should be kept away from them.

　　Zhang Dandan believes that good children's picture books should have a correct worldview. In the past, most children's reading materials were text with not many pictures, so children faced a literacy threshold when reading books. Picture books help them overcome this limitation, allowing children who cannot yet read to look at pictures with their eyes and listen to stories with their ears while parents read picture books, completing a preliminary understanding of the world and gradually forming a worldview 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 are quite famous, some parents feel after buying them that they are not suitable for domestic children to read.

　　In this regard, Zhang Dandan said that China has strict laws, regulations and industry guidance for the introduction of the publishing industry, but in practice there are inevitably some picture books introduced through informal channels, and relevant departments should strengthen supervision and law enforcement. In addition, because of cultural differences, it is not necessarily true that a picture book that is famous or has won international awards is suitable for domestic children. Readers in different countries may have different associations with the same thing or the same picture, so parents also need to learn to distinguish when choosing picture books and not blindly follow.

　　Regarding problematic picture books, Xi Peizhi believes that governing the chaos requires comprehensive measures. It is necessary to strengthen intellectual property protection, increase efforts to crack down on piracy, combat the production and sales of pirated picture books, and maintain normal market order; it is also necessary to increase supervision and review to eliminate the circulation of picture books with low content quality and poor production materials.

　　Sun Hongyan suggested paying attention to some blank spots or blind areas. For example, many inferior pirated picture books have appeared on the internet and e-commerce platforms, and these should be cracked down on and governed; parents should also be warned that they should take the initiative to refuse pirated books for their children.

　　"Relevant departments and the media should increase publicity, raise public awareness of prevention, not purchase low-quality or pirated picture books, and promote the healthy development of the book market," Zhang Dandan said.