Chinese children suffer from 'reading malnutrition'

Chinese children, as it were, are suffering from spiritual "malnutrition" due to lack of reading, reported China News Service.

Although Chinese parents spare no effort to send their children to various after-school classes to acquire useful skills, they have neglected to let their children constantly improve one of the most important abilities – reading ability.

Chinese parents attach great importance to their children's education. According to reliable statistics, education expenditures in most Chinese families account for more than 30 percent of the total household income, and is still growing. In contrast, spending on children's books is even less than what is spent on toys and clothing.

According to a survey report on the reading ability and preferences of children up to the age of 9 recently released by the China Children's Press & Publication Group, 58 percent of Chinese parents spend more than 30 yuan on their children's reading per month, and the purchase mainly depends on the content of the reading material. Furthermore, there are large imbalances among the sales of different children's books.

For instance, exercise books, fiction, and comic books are always on the list of bestsellers, while picture books that teach popular science, basic life principles and other knowledge have really low popularity among both children and parents.

The survey shows that the low popularity of those picture books is mainly because there are too few choices and the subject matter, binding, and layout of these books are less eye-catching and entertaining.

Parents' neglect of the importance of reading has badly affected their children's reading ability. Encourage your children to read widely and help them select and read as many high-quality books as possible so they can recover from "reading malnutrition" quickly and improve their reading ability day by day.

By People's Daily Online