Types of Chinese Children’s Books by Age 中文兒童書的分類

This is part of my series on Building Your Chinese Library.  

Originally written Jan 1, 2016. Updated July 2021. Total rewrite.

Wow, I first wrote this post in 2016, and 6 years later, the post feels really old. I mean, doesn’t everyone know what type of books there are out there?

But I try to remember, when Thumper was 1, I had no clue. I didn’t even know what a Picture Book was. There’s also the issue that building a Chinese library for kids in the US is a difficult task.   I don’t think one should just buy all the books Taiwanese parents recommend. At least at the younger level, their kids have access to so many language related content. Whereas for us, books provide an important tool for teaching Chinese.

Anyways, I hope my post is useful for that new parent who has never paid attention to children’s books.

Fiction 文學小說

My first set of books for Thumper in utero, other than Harry Potter, was Windmill Publishing’s 幼兒故事小屋, with stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Three Little Pigs.   I didn’t know about Board Books vs Picture Books, or about choosing quality books then. Now, I don’t tend to buy books from these publishers.

The Taiwanese book market is slightly different from the American one.   When you browse used books from a generation ago, that big jump from picture to chapter type books is huge. My mother poopoo’ed me reading bedtime stories to the kids.

But in the last generation, a lot of books got translated into Chinese and they introduced the concept of reading to children from birth and early readers.

Anyways, tangent. So here are the terms you may come across if you’re searching for Children’s books(童書)in Taiwan.

Board Books (0-1.5) 翻翻書 (fan fan shu)

Particularly suited for really young children because they are thick books that can handle young children roughly flipping through them.  They often have cut outs, inserts, moveable, and touchable parts.  Each page is often only one sentence long.  Eric Carle is a prime example and his sets are in Chinese.  Many other board books are Japanese translated.  Most of these books, you will find, have no zhuyin in them because they’re meant for parents to read to children.

Another name for board books is 硬頁書. Sub-categories of board books are books made out of cloth, 翻翻布書, and books with individual pages laminated, 塑膠書 and touch and feel books, 觸摸書. Many of these books have a hide and seek feature, which young babies just LOVE.

All of these books are great for that first year when they like to slobber and chew (teething!) all over the books. Just remember, unless you’re reading to the kids only and putting it out of reach at other times, these books are likely to be torn to pieces by the time your kid is done with them.

Picture Books (1.5-8) 繪本 (hui4 ben3)

Like Board Books, they’re meant for young children who cannot read yet.  They range from a couple of sentences to long passages like 我愛瑪婷 Love Martine.  I think once kids start reading in the US, they move onto Early Readers that have pictures still but the text gets longer.   The content and word usage is also very simple so kids can practice reading.

You could start reading picture books to your kid the minute they’re born. But since they’re so touchy and feely that first year, it’s not the end of the world to delay picture books till later. It’s not a race!

Picture books aren’t necessarily designed for early readers, the word usage can be more mature.  Sometimes they don’t have zhuyin in them.   They tend to have tiny fonts instead of the big ones designed for the early reader.  However, you can find some great Chinese picture books for kids who have learned zhuyin or read characters before age 6.

If your kid doesn’t want to touch picture books or early readers because they’re ready, these types of picture books can be a good alternative. So you can say these books are appropriate for reading to from 0-6 and reading from from 4-8 years old.

Within picture books, there are a few “levels”.

Toddler Picture Books

Right after board books, I like to start the kids on 1-2 sentence Toddler Picture books. Gomi Taro is a great author for these types of books. These sentences usually repeat and just change 1-2 words per page. They often also have a hide and seek feature; asking kids to find similarities and differences. These are great for helping kids learn Chinese grammar and vocabulary.

Books in the board books and toddler picture books area also often talk about daily routines. Taking a bath, brushing teeth, potty training, helping put on clothes, etc.

Preschooler Picture Books

As the kids grow older and you add picture books with more and more sentences per page, there comes a particular subset of picture books when they reach 3-4 years old. At this point, they often start going to preschool.

There is a huge subset of books that deal with this, namely going to school, fighting with friends, what you learn in school, feelings, being afraid of the dark, etc. Vicky is one set (but we should leave that for when kids learn to read!) and Franklin the Turtle is another.

Other books good for preschoolers are stories that start getting more complicated, deal with feelings, with right and wrong, etc.

Picture books for Readers

So typically, at this point (age 4/5+) overseas parents are starting their kids on Sagebook and then zhuyin to get their kids to read. Then they follow it up with early readers (next section).

But I didn’t know until after both my kids had started reading in earnest was that there is actually a different set of books for kids in between the time that they’ve learned to read and moving into chapter books.

These are the books that have huge ass illustrations, so they are catalogued under picture books, but really they are complete long stories that older kids (age 4+) really love listening to and can read if they resist reading chapter books.

Why would they resist? Well, maturity wise, many of them still really love these huge illustrations. They don’t like the books that look very foreboding with so many characters and fewer and fewer illustrations.

For both of my kids, they went through a period where they didn’t want to make the jump from picture books to beginning readers for about a year. It wasn’t until after they actually started reading that I realized I could have offered them these books instead.

Now, the only reason you wouldn’t see these books recommended as books for beginner readers to read is that beginning readers and early readers by definition were written especially for, well, beginning readers! So they have easier vocabulary and bigger font. These picture books don’t fit that bill.

But from a story point of view, your kindergartener+ will love these types of books.

Little Tim, Mr. Men and Little Miss, and I Love Martine are some examples of books in this category.

Early Readers, Beginning Readers (7-10) 橋樑書

Since the Chinese name has the character 橋 I like to call them Bridging Books.  Like its name suggests, it bridges between regular children’s fiction and picture books and it’s there for the child who has learned how to read but cannot read super long text-only books yet.  

Unlike picture books, where pictures help tell the story and the text can sometimes be secondary, in Bridging Books, the pictures are secondary.  They also get progressively smaller or fewer the higher level they get.

Books designed as Early Readers usually have bigger fonts and always have zhuyin.  In Taiwan, some publishers designate level by the number of total characters.  Early Readers are books that under 20,000 characters.  

For example, the 閱讀123 (Reading 123) series is between 5000-10K.  But not every publisher is going to list this.  Obviously since the books are designed as early readers, the vocabulary is also very age appropriate.  Sometimes much easier than what you’d see in picture books.

For a more in depth discussion on the different types of Bridging books, see my post Chinese Reading Levels in Elementary.

Children’s Literature 兒童小說(9-13)

Though a kid can start reading Children’s Literature from 1st grade, usually 兒童文學 is a subcategory in bookstores from third grade at up. I think of it as books that are (mostly) all text, typically from 3rd to 7th grade.

Often, books are graded by publishers into 中低級 / Lower Elementary (1st-3rd) or 中高級 / Upper elementary (4th-6th).    Zhuyin starts getting phased out in the upper elementary books, around 4th grade.

However, books published a generation ago (80’s, 90’s), tend to have zhuyin even for upper elementary literature books.

For a more in depth discussion on the different types of books in elementary, see my post Chinese Reading Levels in Elementary.

Teen Literature 青少年文學 (11-18)

Teen literature are usually books from around grade 6 to high school. Books at this age level can start dealing with love, relationships, and more advanced topics like war, dystopian, hero’s journeys, etc.

I’m not saying that younger kids’ novels don’t have these topics. But I think in general, these books tend to look even more outward toward society, exploring social issues and the growing child’s place in the world.

Adult Books 成人小說(13+)

Even though these are adult books, often kids can start reading them in their teens. The language level is good enough then.

For example, I think of 三毛 as an adult author. But I know teenagers read her.

Non Fiction 非文學

So all those above are really fiction reading. For non-fiction, the leveling is not as exact. But I typically break it down into these 4 levels:

  • Picture books (0-10)
  • Short chapter books (7-13)
  • Novel non-fiction (10+)
  • Adult non-fiction (13+)

The reason leveling isn’t exact is the problem of zhuyin. Language-wise, they’re just hard in general because they’re non-fiction vocabs! But with zhuyin it makes it so much more readable than non-zhuyin books.

The problem is, of course, that Taiwanese publishers like to not put in in their non-fictions. I don’t know if they think parents are going to read to their kids or what. But it makes finding readable books hard.

Below are example books in these 4 levels.

Picture book non-fiction
Chapter book type non-fiction
Novel Non-fiction
Adult non-fiction

Other Types of Books

Comic Books 漫畫 (8+)

Mustn’t forget comic books. There are very few sets that have zhuyin. So I would say most of them are appropriate for kids over 8, when they can read enough characters to read comic books.

三采 (Suncolor) is a publishing company that publishes a lot of comic books.

Most of these are non-fiction, but there are also lots of comic books on the Chinese classics like 三國演義.

Age Appropriate Books

During my research I also learned about what types of books are appropriate for what age.  There are various ways you can look at age appropriateness.  With cognitive development, some Japanese researcher divided into the following range:

  • 故事 Stories (4-6yrs)
  • 寓言 Moral Stories (6-8)
  • 童話 Fairy Tales (8-10)
  • 小說 Fiction (10-15)

When kids are between 10-15, they can read book that reflect the real world.  I’m inferring by this they mean books that make them reflect on the issues in real life.  

What I find interesting is that from a Montessori philosophy standpoint, 6-12, especially 6-9, is the time when kids are very preoccupied with what’s right and wrong.  This goes well with the idea that they should be reading moral stories 寓言 during this time.

With physical development you can divide it into years 0-3, 3-6, 6-11, 11-15.  This really mimics the Montessori concept of a 3 year development cycle.  A researcher, K.D. Cather, proposes that teenagers like to read adventure type stories such as Tom Sawyer and Robinson Crusoe.

It goes on.  But what I got out of the article is that there is no reason to get abridged books just so the kids can learn about Romeo and Juliet or Tom Sawyer at an earlier age.   These are not books we read so we can check it off a list.  There are tons of those types of books in Chinese.  It is more appropriate to get books that meet children’s developmental needs than to have them read higher grade level books.  Just because they can read it doesn’t mean they can understand and appreciate the content.  I’m rethinking about the books I want Thumper to read right now after reading this.

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6 thoughts on “Types of Chinese Children’s Books by Age 中文兒童書的分類

  1. Wow I am so happy to have found your blog! This is a subject I have wondered a lot about, and I am so amazed to find that someone has done all this thoughtful research into a tricky dilemma — I’m a new mom in Canada to a (currently) 13-month-old, and I am the Chinese speaker in our family. Our daughter loves books, but we had really only 1 age appropriate book (hand-me-down) in traditional Chinese so far. I will be going through all of your posts on this. Thank you again!!

  2. Thank you so much; I never thought of the limited time angle, but our family agrees that books written by native speakers contain a lot about the culture in both the language and illustrations.

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