ABSTRACT
This chapter compares two types of reading materials for literacy education in China. The first type is the lianhuan hua (also spelled as the lian huan hua), meaning linked serial pictures, that constituted the author’s childhood reading materials in the mid-1990s, while the second type is the picture book read by the author’s daughter and her generation who are now still progressing towards literacy. This comparative case study charts how literacy education and research in China have evolved over the years with a particular focus (1) on the country’s move towards emergent literacy education and multiliteracies< and (2) on attempts to shed some light on the future of the traditional format of the lianhuan hua in terms of the proposed triangular model involving “who”, “why”, and “how”.
