Customer Reviews

My Little Book of Chinese Words (Bilingual Edition) (English and Mandarin Chinese Edition)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This little square book is perfect for the little hands with big curiosity. Pages are printed on heavy-stock paper for durability. On each spread, the Chinese character is juxtaposed with its former pictographic form on the left-side page with nicely illustrated wood block art on the right-side page. One almost doesn't need to look at the translated English word to know what each character's meaning is. There's also pinyin to help one to figure out the pronunciation. It kept my 5-year-old buried in the pages for three days!

Nice illustrations, but pronunciation does not include diacritical marks or any indication of tone, making it useless as a learning tool.

The book, although attractive, has several shortcomings:
1. The tones are totally omitted with the pinyin, making the learning of accurate pronunciation impossible
2. There is a blatant error in the character for spoon. The symbol used is actually the character for a knife.
3. The character for root is actually the symbol for origin or original.
4. The character for summit actually signifies the ending.

There are other errors in translation that do not reflect the spirit of each character.

It appears that the author did not consult with a native Chinese speaker prior to publishing this work. She may have actually consulted with someone of Japanese descent, thus the meanings aren't quite consistent with what the Chinese interpretation might be.

My daughter received this book for her birthday from a friend. It is beautifully illustrated and the characters are here as well as the pinyin and english but the pinyin tones are missing. To me if the purpose is to help learn Chinese words/characters, then providing appropriate tone to speak is required otherwise the word spoken is most likely going to be a different meaning.

This book is adorable. I took this book to my son's school for a presentation to show some of the pages and to explain the idea about how chinese characters were formed.
The art work is beautiful and content is very interesting, but not too familiar by non-chinese speaking people.

I can't believe the author did not include the tone marks so you know how to say the word. No point in adding the pinyin without the tones. Strange decision. Lovely pictures though.

This book will be well used in our house. I know both of my girls will love the pictures. This book will make learning Mandarin and Pinyin fun.