如何给孩子选好书，是每一个重视阅读的家庭都会不断思考和尝试的话题。
今天给大家介绍一个概念 - Living Books - 这个概念兼具了1）历久弥新；2）启迪思考；3）陪伴成长的三重含义。我暂时把它翻译为‘生活之书’。
“Living Book”能够触动孩子的情感，链接他们的真实生活，点燃想象力，并培养他们的独立思考的能力。
选择Living Book, 可以参考以下的五条原则。每一个家庭，根据自己的价值观，根据孩子的特点，可以打造和构建自己家庭的 ‘living book library'。我的课堂所选择的living books, 也会陆续和大家分享。
1. 通常由对写作的主题有真情实感，充满热情的单一作者撰写，而不是由一个受雇组成的委员会制定完成。
2. 采用“文学风格”写作，带有叙述性或对话性语调，一本文艺的书，像是在讲故事或与人聊天，而不是堆砌很多数据事实。
3. 书籍能触动情感并激发想象力，孩子可以在脑海中清晰地看到书中的画面，情节，与书中人物产生真实的个体化的联系。读完Living Book 之后，会有情感的波动，会有想聊一聊，或者想再看一遍的感受。
4. 语言优美，不是肤浅的低质量内容（“twaddle”），避免使用简单、琐碎的句子。
5. 最重要的是，"Living Book"包含的是充满生命力的思想，而不仅仅是说教，或者是简单的价值灌输。这些思想可以陪伴孩子的成长，并启发他们产生新的想法。
接下来，我们通过三本英文书的片段摘选示例，来说明如何用以上五个原则选择Living Book。
第一本，也是我在国内最常见的那种一整套引进的书。
它充满了日期和事实。你可能会与希特勒憎恨犹太人，爱因斯坦因为是犹太人而离开祖国的这一思想产生联系。但这段文字并没有以触动情感或激发想象力的方式来呈现这些内容，也没有鼓励你在脑海中形成画面。其余部分只是陈述事实而已。
“Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879. He became famous as a scientist and as one of the most important thinkers of our times. In 1933 when the dictator Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany, Einstein left his native land for good. Einstein was a Jew. Hitler hated Jews. In 1940 Albert Einstein became a citizen of the United States.”
Albert Einstein, Graphic Biography, Saddleback Educational Publishing, 2008
第二本，和第一本类似，在国内也比较常见。
很明显，这是一本系列的，由出版社统编出版的书。你怎么看这段文字？它是否包含能激发你想象力或触动你情感的“具有生命力的思想”？它是在讲述爱因斯坦的生平故事，还是仅仅罗列一些枯燥的事实？
“Science was Albert Einstein’s first love, yet he always found time to devote tireless efforts to political causes close to his heart. His ardent humanism led him to strive for peace, freedom and social justice. The young Einstein found the authoritarianism and militarism of the German educational system profoundly disturbing. The virulent nationalism and brutality of the First World War served to confirm Einstein’s pacifist and internationalist convictions. Einstein was not a purely abstract thinker. He grasped the world in concrete images and strove to translate them into words and equations that could be understood by others.”
Know About Albert Einstein, Maple Kids from Maple Press, 2012
第三本书，在国内就很少见，价格也贵的。
是不是先被画面的优美给陶醉了？
这本书文字的风格和语调和前两本有着天壤之别。读的时候，我的脑海中仿佛放映起了一部电影。我看到了一个普通人在日常生活中忙碌的样子，与他产生了某种共鸣。事实依然存在，我知道爱因斯坦何时何地生活，但这些事实被叙述隐藏在“鲜活的思想”之中。
比如，我们可以探索到的“鲜活的思想”包括：
1）原来科学家也是在做日常琐事时，心里却想着别的事情；
2） 思考和好奇是可以的，甚至可能引领你发现重要的东西；
3）你可以在做日常工作时，依然想着对自己而言重要的事物。
“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to ride upon a beam of light? In the first years of the twentieth century, there lived a young man who wondered about that. In fact, he wondered about a lot of things, and what became of his wondering you shall see.
“In 1905 Albert Einstein spent his days in an office in the Swiss city of Bern, working as a patent clerk. He helped inventors fill out the paperwork so they would own their creations and no one else could claim them. He typed out the forms and filed them in their proper places, chatted with his friend in the office next door, and ate his simple lunch every day at his desk. When evening softened the sky, he walked home and greeted his wife and newborn son, and then shared with them a dinner of beef and potatoes, or pea soup and cabbage.
“But all the while he was doing these normal, homely deeds, his mind was somewhere else. He might be typing or chatting or eating, but he was thinking about light and time.”
- Lambert, Lorene. Stories of the Nations, chapter 11, “On a Beam of Light,”
通过三本书的对比，你能看出区别吗？
Living Book 呈现的是“鲜活的思想”，能让学科内容栩栩如生的思想。书中仍会包含事实，但这些事实会嵌在思想中。正是这些思想滋养孩子的心灵和头脑，而不仅仅是干巴巴的事实。这种差别很大，我希望这些例子能让你对理解这种差异更有信心。
如果大家觉得这个帖子对您有帮助，求鼓励，求支持 - 请星标关注🌟，转发↔️，在看👀，点赞👍，留言💬，让更多的孩子爱读书，读好书。
同时推荐simply charlotte mason 这个网站。本文原文出于以下链接：
https://simplycharlottemason.com/blog/what-a-living-book-sounds-like/
