Choosing the right comics for children

In addition to entertaining and keeping children away from electronic devices and social networks, comics also bring many practical benefits. First, comics teach children about empathy. The content of comics often revolves around solving social problems in a way that can help readers understand and sympathize with many lives that have encountered difficult fates in life. For example, in the comic series "Than Dong Dat Viet", through the arbitration cases of Trang Ti, children can partly understand that there was a time when there was a clear distinction between rich and poor, and sympathize more with the disadvantaged.

Reading comics is a good habit and hobby that should be encouraged in children.

In addition, it also helps children acquire knowledge in the most attractive way. If children like fairy tales and myths, there will be many comic books such as: "The Hundred-Joint Bamboo Tree", "Puss in Boots", "Rapunzel", "Andersen's Fairy Tales", "Greek Mythology". Even "difficult" topics such as history and science, if creatively expressed with interesting pictures, suddenly become extremely attractive and easy to understand: "A Brief History of the World in Pictures", "A Brief History of Vietnam in Pictures", "George and the Big Bang, Why?", "I'm a Studious Person"... In addition, comic books that teach life skills are also very diverse, helping children to freely and proactively choose their favorite topics and the knowledge they want to absorb.

Most importantly, comics initially train children to read, to stick with reading culture from an early age. For children who do not know all the letters (primary school), or are lazy to read books, or in more special cases, have difficulty reading, reading comics will be a great way to create this habit. Comics have many colors and vivid pictures that easily attract children. Next, children read the words to understand the whole story being conveyed. If children read comics regularly, they can prepare their vocabulary to be ready to read text books. Parents can thereby increase the number of words read with illustrated text books. When children can read text books completely, help them maintain this habit because it will help their learning and thinking.

Ms. Tran Ngoc Dieu, Hamlet 6, Ward 4, Ca Mau City, said: “When my child was about 4 years old, I taught him to read comic books with colorful and diverse drawings. Gradually, he became more and more interested and curious about the stories in the comic books. He started to want to learn letters to read the captions in the comic books. Every year, I choose comic books with more letters so that he can read and think while reading, and it stimulates him to learn letters more. He spends time reading comic books in his free time and often asks this and that when he sees things and events in real life that are similar to those in the drawings.”

“I often choose stories about life skills for my children to read so that they can understand more about how to handle situations in life. Some specially designed comics also teach children important topics such as reading, writing and many knowledge revolving around historical society. Letting children read stories is also a way to separate them from iPads and smartphones...”, Ms. Nguyen Bich Tram, Hamlet 3, Ward 9, Ca Mau City, shared.

The comic book market is very rich and diverse, children can freely choose according to their preferences. (Photo taken at Fahasa Bookstore, Ca Mau City).

However, the comic book market is now beginning to show worrying changes. On the shelves of bookstores or bookstores, comic books and fairy tales for children are also extremely rich with all kinds of genres, but not all comic books have the purity appropriate for their age. Parents will be startled by the vulgar words and vulgar drawings in the stories. Not to mention, the content of comic books now deeply explores the first emotions of life or stories of violent killing... Typically, the series "Sailor Moon" all depict characters wearing short clothes, or the story "Mysterious River" is full of kissing scenes...

However, parents need to check the content of comics for their children because of the changes that are appearing.

Talking about the harmful effects of this type of comic, Dr. Vu Thu Huong, a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Education, said: “School age (from 6 to 18 years old) is the age of curiosity and eagerness for everything. Therefore, children will remember unverified information for a long time. They will absorb side stories faster than adults, remember longer than adults and are also more curious to the end than adults. When reading comic books with unsystematic information and offensive images, children can completely misunderstand, forming very bad habits, affecting their personality.”

Advice for parents is to carefully check the content of comics before buying them for their children, guiding them to choose stories with pure and appropriate content. For children, in addition to entertainment needs, comics also contribute to the formation and development of thinking and personality. Therefore, it is time for educators to speak up about the phenomenon of sensitive images and content in children's books./.

Lam Khanh

Source link