2 . 4 Books for Your Christmas List

These spectacular books would make fantastic presents this Christmas.

Journey to the River Sea

by Eva Ibbotson.

Illustrated by Katie Hickey

(Macmillan Children’s Books)

In this children’s classic, travel deep into the Amazon jungle in search of adventure with heroine Mala. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of an award-winning, best-selling story this gift edition comes packed with lots of colorful artwork from illustrator Katie Hickey.

Little People Big Dreams Treasury

by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara and Lisbeth Kaiser

(Frances Lincoln Children’s book)

In this wonderfully illustrated collection you can explore the fascinating true stories of 50 brilliant “dreamers” including activists like Greta Thunberg, artists such as Frida Kahlo, musicians, scientists, sporting legends and writers.

Daughter of the Deep

by Rick Riordan

(Puffin Books)

Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan’s latest book is a thrilling sci-fi adventure set in an academy for underwater explorers. During the sea-trials at the end of their first year, Ana and her classmates witness a terrible tragedy and soon begin to uncover deep, dark secrets and age-old rivalries.

Everyone Sang

by William Sieghart.

Illustrated by Emily Sutton

(Walker Books)

If you like poetry, you’ll love this illustrated collection, which is divided into four sections: Poems to Make You Smile; Poems to Move You; Poems to Give You Hope; and Poems to Calm and Connect You. Poets such as Carol Ann Duffy and Lemn Sissay are included.

3 . The story of a 92-year-old book lover in a village of Chongqing has touched many recently, Sun Shiquan has collected more than 7,000 books over the past years and has offered a free local library to people there for years.

He was born in Pipa Village in Xiuqi Town of Chongqing’s Chengkou County. Being a bookworm as a child, he read all kinds of ancient books including the Four Books and the Five Classics. In the 1950s, he became one of only a handful of local college graduates and later served as a middle school teacher in the county.

He started to collect books in 1983 and gradually built a collection of many kinds over more than 40 years. Among his holdings is a precious set known as the Si Ku Quan Shu, dating back to Qing Dynasty. It is one of the only seven copies in the country.

Wearing glasses, Sun reads for more than three hours every day. Now he has finished reading most of his collections. Speaking of her father, Sun Ziyu, said, “My father has a habit of making notes on each book. He makes a mark whenever he stops reading so that he can carry on reading from where he left off.”

Village official Liu Jiao said, “Many children in the village love to visit Sun and listen to his stories.” She said the elderly man has earned respect from the whole village. People call him “Teacher Sun” and children call him “great-grandfather”.

Sun Ziyu said her father also writes poems and prose(散文) in his spare time and enjoys reading his works to the family. She said under her father’s influence, family members take the time to read together and exchange views. “That’s their favorite part,” she said.

“My father has loved reading for a lifetime,” Sun Ziyu said. “Reading is his meat and drink.”

6 . An important lesson in the moral (道德的) education of children could be as close as the book in their hands. Stories matter. And they can play a role in building moral values in young audiences, according to the results of a new study.

Lindsay Hahn is the first author of the new study, which explores how media content (内容) influences children. Many studies done before have focused on wide concept (概念), but Hahn’s study looks at how moral values might influence the kids’ values. Do children reading particular moral, characteristics take in those qualities and build their own morality? The findings suggest so.

“Parents, caregivers, and teachers are often wondering how media can be used for good,” says Hahn. “How can it be used for good things? How can it discourage bad habits? How can it educate?” Answering those questions begins with a better understanding of how to use media. “When parents are considering what media they might want to select for their children, they can deliberate what particular moral value is being stressed by the main character, and how the main character is treated because of those actions,” she says.

For the study, Hahn and her workmates took the main character from a young adult novel. They wrote the content to reflect the study’s focus on moral values. Those stories were shared with about 200 participants (参与者) between the ages of 10 and 14. This is a favorable range for media research because it’s more difficult to introduce the understanding of stories to younger kids, while challenging to hold the attention of older teenagers, who become bored with basic storylines, according to Hahn.

7 . 1. As a first-time e-paper user, I am not sure if all the momentary pixilation (像素) is normal. The size is ideal for my new-teenager. There are hardly any annoyances and the kid seems enjoying the experience. The parental controls are, mildly put, inadequate. I would anticipate being able to define lock-down timings and limit usage duration for a device targeted at kids.

---Miki

2. This is such a lifesaver! My son reads books constantly. We were doing our best to buy books and use the library, but it was hitting our wallets hard. With the Kindle Free Time included with this Kindle kids edition, he has access to thousands of books. I get to set the age appropriate limits on the book access. As we live on a tight budget, it’s great to have a one-year free subscription to Free Time.

---Billie

3. Just received this device today and I’m ready to throw it out the window. Navigation is horrible and even customer service admitted that they don’t know how to help. It’s a nightmare trying to get your free subscription set up as they just keep redirecting you to set up a 30-day trial and be charged after. I’ll be cancelling everything and sending this back as soon as possible.

---Catherine

4. This is a reader’s kindle. We want our children to read—not play video games all day. From the moment we received this device as a gift, our kids had immediate access to 55 books that we had purchased through our Amazon account. Now they can carry around a whole library of books. Not to mention all of the free out of copyright material that is available.

---Norah

8 . After high school English teacher Larry Abrams started his teaching career in a far suburb outside of Philadelphia, he found he taught in a book desert (荒漠). Many of the kids in school simply struggled (挣扎) with reading and then writing .

In 2017, when one of his students told him she had no book to read to her 2-year-old daughter, Abrams took action. He put forward a call to friends and family asking for gently used children’s books, and in no time, he had more than 1, 000 of them. He began handing out the books to young moms and local elementary schools. That was the start of his nonprofit, BookSmiles, which has since collected, sorted, and handed out hundreds of thousands of books throughout New Jersey and the Philadelphia area — and will soon reach 1 million.

BookSmiles calls on people to help collect books and drop them off in the group’s large collection boxes, which are painted with literary-themed artwork and put outside local businesses, houses of worship, schools, and people’s homes. Books are often handed out through teachers, who come to the book bank and choose as many books as they want.

Larry Abrams thinks children should be read to because it’s something joyful that creates a bond (纽带) between the parent and the child in such an important way. Reading books creates a moment that will never die off and always stay with the child. And what’s more, reading books to kids gives them power. The most important tool that they get is words. There are some kids who grow up hearing lots of words because they’re read to every single night. They are used to hearing sentences connected together when they’re babies. And then there are other kids who never get that. Reading and books help level that playing field. It gives words, millions of words, to these babies who really, really need them.

9 . Today, many people spend a lot of time reading online, whether reading news, social media, or e-books. While online reading opens up a lot of knowledge to people, there are some drawbacks, too. These include eyestrain, headaches, as well as difficulty in even finishing reading the text. Now a new reading plugin (插件) has been intended to help people overcome these problems and read faster online.

The reading plugin called Bionic Reading, which was developed by Swiss designer Renato Casutt, was created with the belief that your brain can read faster than your eyes. The plugin makes the first few letters of each word in bold (粗体), which actually allows your eyes to skip over parts of the text and your brain to fill in what is missing. Incredibly, reading like this feels like finally unlocking 100 percent of people’s brain.

Casutt came up with the plugin by accident. He was reading a book in a foreign language and realized he could read it faster and well master it if he separated it into parts. He has worked for six years to develop Bionic Reading and is still working to perfect it. Many people who want to strengthen their reading ability show interest in it, but more research is needed before it can be definitively shown that the system improves reading ability. But people with dyslexia (诵读障碍) have confirmed that Bionic Reading did help them focus on what they are reading.

Casutt’s goal is to integrate the plugin into all reading apps and online services. “In a digital world dominated (支配) by shallow forms of reading, Bionic Reading aims to encourage a more in-depth reading and understanding of written content,” he said. Bionic Reading is available in several apps like Fiery Feeds, Lire, and Next App. The best way to know if it helps you read better online is to try it yourself and find out what it is all about.