We read books for entertainment(Hirayama 2015). Reading is motivated by expectations of experiencing positive emotions. However, Fukuda (2016) failed to observe positive changes in the feelings of the participants of an experiment who read a short positive story. As that result may have been because the materials were too short for any emotional changes to occur,the present study investigates the effect of reading a long positive novel on readersʼemotions.

In our sequence of experiments, the participants were university students. Two positive novels and two neutral textbooks about psychology were first selected in a pilot study. In the main experiment,we hypothesized that reading a long positive novel,but not a long neutral text,would elicit positive emotions within the readers. The results of a 2 x 2(valance:positive vs.neutral text x test period:pretest vs.posttest)mixed-design ANOVA revealed that participants felt better after reading the positive novels compared to reading the neutral texts. We discuss the implications of these findings for reading as a distraction strategy and for research on readersʼ emotions.

After the announcement of the Middle School Curriculum of 2011,the Chinese middle school textbooks,published by People Education Press, was completely revised from 2013 to 2016. This paper aims to analyze composition education problems in these textbooks by clarifying the changes in the teaching materials. The author researched the content of composition teaching materialsin the textbooks in three editions (1992 edition, 2001 edition, and 2013 edition). Based on the research results,the author clarified that the 2013 edition textbooks(1)cut down the number of activities that were considered important in the 2001 edition,and (2)increased writing technique training materials,which resemble those composition materials in the 1992 edition textbooks. In conclusion,this study shows that the composition education in China is returning to technique training where several problems exist, such as cutting off students from actual communication and the lack of practicality.

In this research,we focused on multidisciplinary guidance based on the viewpoint that a cross-curriculum approach is necessary to improve cognitive and expressive ability. Using“Gon the Fox”illustrations from Japanese language and manual arts textbooks by four publishers, we were able to implement multidisciplinary guidance. The results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis from the viewpoint of changes in the number of characters,changes in the level of expressive content,and changes within individuals revealed an improvement in cognition and expression relating to changes in personality and feelings of one of the two characters,suggesting that the use of these illustrations had a certain effect on multidisciplinary guidance.

This study explores experienced nursery teachersʼ sense of values of picture books by examining the process of how they select picture books in nursery schools. Then, we considered based on the previous studies of children book publishersʼstrategy towards nursery schools. “Sense of values”of picture books in this study refers to the total of selected policies,likes and dislikes,priorities,evaluation,etc. A lot of previous studies have treated nursery teachersʼpicture book selections,but it wasnʼt clear what kind of sense of values they had when they selected picture books. This study focused on these point.

We interviewed six principals of public nursery schools. As a result,we found out how picture books in nursery schools were purchased. For example,there were no criterions for selecting picture books,nursery teachers had selected picture books in their preferences,they had a very small budget for buy picture books,and they generally bought picture books from specific publisher(Fukuinkan Shoten Publishers,Inc.)or Fukuinkan Shotenʼs agency(Kodomonotomosha). Nursery teachers valued the picture books published by Fukuinkan Shoten and they avoided digital books and books with characters. It was clear that the sense of values among the teachers were formed through the relationship between them and Fukuinkan Shotenʼs staff,by putting together organized the results of interview study and the analysis of records of the publisherʼs history. The findings suggests that there are“Teach”and“Be taught”relationships between the Fukuinkan Shotenʼs staff and nursery teachers. Therefore,we pointed out that the values of the publisherʼs staff,who are the educators and promorters of picture books have a potentially powerful effect to nursery teachersʼvalue formation process.