While the series of "100,000 Reasons Why" is aimed at children and teenagers, young people and even adults also like to read it because of its lively text and in-depth content. Especially during the Cultural Revolution, when there were very few books to read, the circulation of the Workers, Peasants and Soldiers edition of Hundred Thousand Reasons reached tens of millions of copies.
In addition, many of the "whys" in "100,000 Reasons" come from daily life, which makes it very practical. Many people have learned a great deal about science, obtained reference materials, and even gained scientific enlightenment from it.
The popular science book was a bestseller for more than 30 years up to the end of the 1990s, with a huge circulation totaling 6 million sets (80 million copies), and is still in circulation at 100,000 sets per year.
This has given rise to a variety of similar popular science books: such as "100,000 Reasons for Primary School Students", "100,000 Reasons for Young Children", "New Edition of 100,000 Reasons for Young Children", "100,000 Reasons for Social Sciences" and so on, and "100,000 Reasons for Young Children" has become a commonly used title on popular science books.
Background of the book
In 1956, after the central government issued the call of "marching to science", as one of the only two professional children's publishers, the Children's and Teenagers' Publishing House, the editors were very much inspired by the idea of producing some popular science books for children to break the status quo of the science books which were either too thin or too few at that time.
However, in 1958, they experienced an unforgettable "Great Leap Forward" as did the whole country, and because it was unsuccessful in all aspects, the editors stopped from producing books that were only about speed and not quality, and thought that only focusing on quality was the right way.
In 1959, they set out to prepare a set of natural science "encyclopedias" for high school and junior high school students to answer a variety of questions, after a period of time, the group practice, and only gradually established a breakthrough in the textbooks and classroom teaching framework of the editorial ideas for the future of the 100,000 editors set the tone of the work of the 100,000 Why, the Chinese popular science books became the most popular.
Why has become one of the loudest brands of popular science books in China.
From June 1970, the fourteen books previously published were revised once again, and the fifteenth to twenty-third books were added.
In 1995, the central government established science and education as the basic national policy. The editors realized that such an atmosphere in the country provided a good opportunity for a comprehensive update of the old version of "100,000 Wonders", and they began preparatory work in 1995, aiming directly at the "new century".