One of the things I’ve been looking for during our trip back to Taiwan are non-fiction books. We’ve been finding our non-fiction books lacking whenever we do any history or science studies. The picture books seem way too easy, but the other non-fiction books I bought too hard for Astroboy.
I finally happened upon the Larousse set of encyclopedia at Mollie. This is a set of 6 encyclopedias, translated from French. Sadly there are no English versions. They are:
- 我的世界史小百科 My First Larousse World History
- 我的地理小百科 My First Larousse Geography
- 我的生活小百科 My First Larousse Encyclopedia
- 我的科學小百科 My First Larousse Science
- 我的台灣小百科 My First Taiwan Encyclopedia
- 我的動物小百科 My first Larousse Animals
The Taiwan Encyclopedia was actually written by 小天下 Publishing, not Larousse. So far I’ve only used the History one. I’m not sure if all 6 books are all written in the sequential format I need for homeschooling. But the animal and geography ones looked promising when I flipped through them.
I’ve been reading 2-3 small chapters to Astroboy whenever I find time. He had found Story of the World 世界的故事 boring because it’s really over his level. With the funny illustrations and simpler vocabulary, he’s definitely been enjoying them. I think I will continue using SOTW for Thumper and this set for Astroboy.
One thing I have learned though when it comes to non-fiction. If the kids don’t read the non-fictions that I bought, it’s not them or the books, but me. I’d never read non-fiction to them as babies so they tend not to think those are fun to read/browse books. So now, I’m resigned to just read non-fiction to them till they pick up the habit.
For example, here are the pages of similar topics side by side. You can click on the pics to see them enlarged.
So far I’m loving this book. It is a great alternative to Story of the World.
So now, I have 4 different sets of books I can use for World History, in order of level:
- 說給兒童的世界歷史 Children Can Listen World History
- 我的世界史小百科 My Larousse First World History
- 寫給兒童的世界歷史 Children Can Read World History (audio also)
- 世界的故事 Story of the World (audio also)
There is tons of Chinese audio for the 3rd set on ximalaya.com and SOTW is available in English audio. I used to think that we can wait till the children’s language level get up to the book level. But knowing these 4 versions are available have allowed me to see how I can spiral upwards when I teach history.