08.Jun.2010 Good Children by Miao Yin-tang

I’m not quite sure why I ended up with this as a child. But here it is, a 1974 propaganda book from the People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Language Press.

Essentially a pictorial guide with English text to being a ‘good child’ it offers helpful guidance on how to behave on International Working Women’s Day, and how to make the most of what you have, repairing broken toys, putting friendship first, helping old people. These are good upstanding things to do and the quaint pictures are, well, quaint. In fact, if it wasn’t for the ‘shoes for a people’s soldier’ page, this is entirely what you’d expect from a Sunday School book of the period.

In an age where children seem to get whatever they want it is a good idea to show them that it doesn’t have to be like that, and for the vast majority of the world, it isn’t like that at all.