The Three Constructive Pathways of Children’s Self-Identity in Chinese Original Picture Books

Self-identity, an essential and inescapable theme in children’s development, is frequently explored in original picture books. Although children’s “self-identity” is centered on the “self,” its construction, from a practical perspective, is not achieved by the self alone. This study, founded on a selective collation and curation of contemporary original Chinese picture books for children, identifies a number of influential works that engage the theme of “self-identity”. It aims to elucidate the real-world orientation of the “self-identity” question as manifested within China’s corpus of original picture books, and to examine the mechanisms by which the proposition of “self-identity” is enacted. By classifying these works, three distinct thematic propositions are distilled: the individual (self-) construction of self-identity, the social construction of self-identity, and the other-mediated construction of self-identity. Through close textual reading and comparative analysis, this paper demonstrates that whether arising from spontaneous personal reflection and the individual’s project of self-construction, from a sense of personal identification catalyzed by social recognition, or from self-identity elicited under the guidance of “others,” the series of picture books grouped under the rubric of “self-identity” uniformly seek to prompt young readers to contemplate the fundamental questions “Who am I?”, “Who do I aspire to become?”, and “By what means might I realize that aspiration?” These three pathways complement and illuminate one another, providing feasible approaches for children to achieve a coherent sense of self-identity.