Customer Reviews

My First Hiragana Activity Book (Dover Children's Activity Books)

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If you have a child interested in studying Japanese, you will find "My First Hiragana Activity Book" a valuable tool. It is easy to follow, with lots of vocabulary and cute pictures supporting each hiragana. Unlike most hiragana work books, which you use once and throw away, this book can be used to practice vocabulary words long after the hiragana has been mastered.

Learning hiragana is the first step to learning Japanese. You simply can't make any progress in the language without it. Because of syllable-based structure of the language, being able to recognize and pronounce the various hiragana is a necessary foundation. There are only forty-six hiragana characters, so learning them is a fairly easy task. Much less daunting than the thousands of kanji one must master as your skills progress!

"My First Hiragana Activity Book" teaches the hiragana in the normal order. Each entry takes up a page, and has two blocks to trace over the character, then six blocks for practice. Each character is supported by about nine pictures that start with that character. For example, the first character "ah" is accompanied by the words like "ahiru" (duck), "ame" (rain), "ashi" (foot) and "atama" (head). The English readings are not given for the words, only a picture, which is a useful technique to allow association of that word directly with the image, rather than translating it into English.

A drawback to "My First Hiragana Activity Book" is that there are not really enough spaces for repetition of the characters. Writing a character six times isn't going to be enough to master it. However, most people studying Japanese keep a separate notebook for repetition practice, and so the extra spaces aren't really needed. Also, the book is squarely aimed at a child audience, and the style is similar to what one would find in a "My First Alphabet" book or something similar. Adults can still use this book and would find it useful in gaining basic vocabulary as long as they don't mind the childish nature of the pictures.

One other thing I discovered, although I don't think this was intended by the author, is that the pictures accompanying each character are a perfect size to be cut out of the book and used as flash cards for vocabulary practice. Cut them out and laminate them, and you have a couple of hundred flash cards for a very affordable price!

Really nice for people trying to learn japanese and they need to take it slow.

When I first opened it I thought it looked like a coloring book [which is great ^^]

On each page it has a few squares to practice each hiragana symbol, and it has easy vocabulary words that start with it, and in the back of the book it has a [4pg] japanese/english word list. All in all, if your just starting out I think this booklet is for you.

I have been studying Japanese off and on for several years and have purchased several books and CDs. This is a fun activity book to help practice the writing of Hiragana characters. I felt like a kid again and even colored in a few of the pictures inside.

This is a workbook, so get your pencil ready and work. It's fun, it has great examples of the words using the characters, and it's rather inexpensive. Overall a good study addition for those working on Japanese writing, kids or adults!

I bought this book for my husband who wanted to learn Japanese. We'd been talking about the old picture books we had as kids when we were learning English and remembered them as being both very effective and easy to use. When I saw the "My First Hiragana Activity Book" I thought this would be perfect. I bought it for him for Christmas and he has been delighted with it. Matching the pictures of animals and common items and activities to the Japanese words is an amazingly effective method of learning. It's like taking a short-cut to that child-like part of the brain that loves to learn. Highly recommended!

This book is in a simple yet effective format to introduce kids or even adults to Japanese words via Hiragana. Popular everyday items are depicted (picture) and also of benefit is an area to practice writing and the stroke order to write. A quick Hiragana reference is provided as well. Also, it can be a fun way to learn via coloring for kids. Towards the back has a list of English words for quick reference but what I also found helpful is the Japanese/English Word List. It's a thin book so it's portable and great when traveling like car rides, etc. Overall, a nice workbook. As a home educator, I recommend this book as a great way to introduce and teach Hiragana.