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This thesis shows how “The Beauty of Nan-Ying” series presents the relationship between farmers and their own lands, and how the picture books including genre painting works as media for plant teaching. The study aims to use the series’ presentation of farmers' lives and plant teaching to help students and the general public achieve a deeper understanding of the series. In order to understand the symbolic meaning of the plants, ten volumes from the series that are related to plants are selected and studied through textual, literature and picture analysis.This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter presents the methodology and its limitations, as well as clarifications for the terminology used in this thesis. The remaining chapters analyse the characteristics of “Nan-Ying” plants, how textual organization of the materials used in the series correspond to literary genre, and explain the connection of the visual and verbal narratives. This thesis also focuses on the symbolic meanings, physical characteristics, and the emblematic features of plants all of which provide an entry point to analyse the analogical possibilities between plants and human sentiments.In addition, certain picture books are taken into the primary school curriculum for its description of ‘rural life’, ‘botanic knowledge’, and ‘cultural experiences’. This research thus evaluates the practicality of the texts in ‘The Beauty of Nan-Ying’ in terms of the above three aspects respectively. Lastly, this thesis will summarize the findings in each chapter, and provide a conclusion and further recommendations as the research result.
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