Customer Reviews

In the Snow

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This book is beautiful to look through and read. Huy Voun Lee tells a story of a mother and son taking a walk on a winter day. During their walk the mother teaches her son different Chinese characters. Lee not only provides the characters, but the symbolism behind them. The story line is simple and Lee provides ten characters, so this book is great for young readers. My two year old loves to thumb through it. Lee's cut paper artwork makes this book not only beautiful, but unique. In The Snow has not only brought joy to our family but added diversity to our bookshelf.

This books provides a great introduction for students and teachers to the Chinese language.

The Chinese writing lesson continues with IN THE SNOW which teaches young readers another 10 forest-snow related Chinese written characters. More advanced than IN THE SAND, these ten beautiful and picturesque Chinese words ranges from 4 lines to 12 lines and there is a pronunciation guide included so kids know how they sound like as well. A wonderful day for Xian Ming and his mom to take a walk in the forest is also a trip to learn how to write the natural objects they see in Chinese: "mu" (tree) shapes like a cross with two branches hanging down; putting two trees together is to write "lin" (forest). When you add three strokes to the left of the word "forest", you will come up with the word "to drench" and add a symbol of "person" to the left of "tree" is to write "xiu" (rest) just as a man leaning on a tree for some rest. In the middle of the walk, the sky starts to rain. And to write "rain", you first draw a line, add a canopy and put four strokes underneath to symbolize raindrops. Add a symbol of "hand" beneath the "rain", you will be writing "xue" (snow) for we can hold snow with our hands.

What's fun about this book is that it shows how to combine single Chinese character to make new words. The last four words have to do with "Sun", "Sparkle" (put three suns together), "moon" and "bright" (add sun and moon together). This book reinforces what I taught my kids in the past regarding these words and now they see mom's lessons printed in a book further help them remember firmly and motivate them to know more.The gorgeous cut-paper collages and delightful storyline make this book a very attractive educational book for readers of all ages and all ethnicities to learn the basics about writing Chinese words which is like drawing pictures that makes one feel like a natural artist.

I purchased this story to share with my preschool class, since we have 2 Chinese ESL students. While the story was not of high interest to all of the children (probably better for slightly older children), it held their attention, and the 2 Chinese boys were thrilled to see familiar faces, familiar writing, and hear familiar words. The story is about a mother and son walking in the snow. The mother teaches the child the Chinese characters for certain words by explaining how the character looks like the word it represents. It was exciting to have the boys participate in storytime and be able to teach the rest of us something! This is so important in a diverse preschool classroom - I can't wait to order more books.

I read this book last year in my class when I had a Vietnamese student . She had learned some Chinese characters from her mother and taught us how to write the characters while we celebrated Chinese and Vietnamese New Year. It was a moving experience.

I read this book last year in my class when I had a Vietnamese student . She had learned some Chinese characters from her mother and taught us how to write the characters while we celebrated Chinese and Vietnamese New Year. It was a moving experience.