The Pet Dragon: A Story about Adventure, Friendship, and Chinese Characters [Hardcover]

Christoph Niemann (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Release date: August 26, 2008 | Age Range: 4 - 8 years | Lexile Measure: 400L (What's this?)

Meet Lin and her pet dragon!

When the dragon mysteriously disappears, Lin sets off on a journey to find her best friend . . . and readers set off on a journey of learning and discovery.

By ingeniously integrating written Chinese characters into the illustrations as the story progresses, Christoph Niemann has created a book that is engrossing, unique, and memorable. The Pet Dragon is a playful introduction to the fascinating world of Chinese language and culture . . . and a terrific story to share with children everywhere.

You are invited to join Lin for an adventure you will not soon forget!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Niemann (The Police Cloud) introduces readers to 33 Chinese characters via an ingenious, breezy tale about a spunky heroine named Lin who's searching for her runaway pet dragon. Throughout Lin's quest, Niemann superimposes bold, black Chinese characters over key images or other elements in his super-smooth digital graphics. When Lin herself is introduced, for example, the character for person is overlaid on her figure, allowing readers to see how it evokes the outline of a body and two legs. Unlike authors of conventional primers, Niemann doesn't try to directly incorporate the special vocabulary into his story (the text doesn't refer to Lin as a person). Nor does he adhere to the expected icon-to-object correspondence every time: as he notes in his genial introduction, some of the match-ups reflect his own imagination at play (the character for work takes the shape of an I-beam at a construction site). As a result, the pages reflect not only Niemann's cleverness, but also his sense of discovery and his enthusiasm. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)
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From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Kindergarten-Grade 3—Lin, a young Chinese girl, receives a baby dragon for a gift. The two of them play together until they accidentally break a vase. Lin's father is so angry that he insists the little creature be caged. The dragon escapes, and Lin goes to look for it. With the help of an old woman, a witch, she finds it living with the other dragons in the clouds, and grown up. The dragon returns Lin to her home, and her father agrees that they can visit often. Though the story is thin, the book is clever. Its purpose is to introduce the Chinese language, and it succeeds admirably. Each page contains one or more Chinese characters, which appear not only at the bottom with the English translation, but also superimposed on the drawings. In this way, Niemann emphasizes the connection between the lines of the character and the object it represents. The stylized illustrations are jaunty and appealing, and the use of red, a color representing good fortune in China, visually unifies the tale from beginning to end. Playful and humorous in his approach, Niemann includes some of the icons of Chinese culture, past and present-dragons, the Great Wall, Ping-Pong, and the ever-present giant cranes that are building modern China. Now that Mandarin is becoming a popular language choice in forward-looking communities, this title is sure to please.—Barbara Scotto, Children's Literature New England, Brookline, MA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Age Range: 4 - 8 years
  
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Greenwillow Books; First Edition first Printing edition (August 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061577766
• ISBN-13: 978-0061577765
• Product Dimensions: 0.4 x 9.2 x 11.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #46 in Books > Children's Books > Travel & Cultures > Explore the World > Asia

More About the Author

Christoph Niemann's illustrations have appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Wired, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration. His work has won numerous awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Art Directors Club and American Illustration. He is the author of several children's books, among them "The Pet Dragon," which teaches Chinese characters to young readers and most recently "I LEGO N.Y", where he depicts New York through ultra minimal lego sculptures. For the Website of the New York Times he writes and illustrates a blog called "Abstract City" . After 11 years in New York, he moved to Berlin with his wife, Lisa, and their three sons. His web site is christophniemann.com.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Fun intro to Chinese but not for learning the language January 12, 2011

By R. Pan

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I got this book to help my son keep his interest in Chinese (I'm a first generation Chinese)and was hoping I could teach him a few words, but I was disappointed to find that though some of it could be used for that purpose and it's an ok children's story, some of the words chosen were just inaccurate. For example, the Chinese character for "wood" was shown as the word for "tree" - although, I suppose in some arcane way it may have been used for "tree" it is not how it would be used normally. And some of the words - like the single character that the book used for "friend" would never be used on it's own by a Chinese speaker - the Chinese translation for "friend" requires 2 words. There were several other words that fall into the same categories that I just mentioned - enough that I don't feel like this would be a good book to teach him Chinese. And it's not good enough of a story to have around just as a story book.

I do appreciate that the book calls to attention that Chinese is a hieroglyphic based language, i.e. the words almost always had some graphical basis in the items or ideas they represent.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars We love this book! October 27, 2008

By Victoria Noble

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am a director of a Preschool and we teach the Mandarin Language here. I ordered this book to add to our collection of story telling and was pleasantly surprised! This is a great book to start teaching the Chinese written characters and the children love love love this story! They even now can pick out the written characters in other written materials because of this book. The story is memorable. Author uses the Chinese character strokes over the pictures. Pictures are cute and story is entertaining.Highly recommend this book!!!

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Why no pinyin? December 31, 2008

By P. Tempest

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a wonderful first introduction to chinese characters for kids. The story is cute, the illustrations are very attractive and fitting the characters into the pictures is a great neumonic. The only thing that left my child reader frustrated was 'daddy, how do you pronounce those characters?' A pinyin pronounciation guide underneath or even at the end would have made this good book great.