Customer comments on this selection.
 Excellent but flawed
If you have Mandarin speakers in your house and are trying to teach a child Mandarin, this is an excellent book. It's pretty enough to hold my two-year-old's attention. I've found a few incorrect tones and several odd translations, but it's mostly high quality. I'm very pleased.
If you don't have Mandarin speakers, this book poses several challenges. First, you'll have to learn how to correctly pronounce the words. I haven't visited the associated website which apparently lets you hear the words. But if you don't speak Mandarin, you'll need to invest substantial time learning how to pronounce pinyin before you can use this book effectively. And, second, this book doesn't display English alongside the Chinese characters and pinyin. It's usually obvious what the word means, but the pictures aren't always obvious. If you already know Mandarin and are teaching a child, that's no problem. But if you don't know Chinese, you may scratch your head looking at 10% or 20% of the words and associated pictures.
A Picture Book
This is a picture book with labelled objects / things / activities. The labels are in simplified Chinese and pin yin, there is no English (or explanations) outside the introduction and index.
The book has a nice, large format. There are two kinds of spreads; locations, and illustrated 'lists'.
Some (incomplete) examples of the 15 double-page location spreads are: at home, in the kitchen, the city center, in the toy store, the park (see customer image), airport, farm, seaside, and kindergarten.
Examples from the 11 (double) pages of lists include occupations, seasons, weather, body parts, foods, colors, animals, verbs, adjectives + prepositions.
As mentioned, there's no English within the main body, and this might sometimes cause you to puzzle for a second at what the pictures are trying to represent (not that bad though, part of the fun perhaps).
The lists aren't comprehensive (how could they be?) but a start. The illustrations are certainly pleasant. The cover image is a typical example (but also see a couple of 'customer images', if they're there). Personally I could have done with the characters being printed larger, but maybe my eyes are just old. Perhaps if you're learning just the spoken language that's no matter anyway.
Personally I was looking at this book to provide some vocabulary in a pleasant, unhurried way (I think I'm really after flash cards) and truthfully, it might be fine for kids, I don't have any to try it out on, so ignore my rating. 2 stars as flash cards, 4 (imagined) for its intended audience (just caution, I seldom give 5s).
 This book is a great place to start
My husband and I are historical researchers and I am currently working on teaching Madarin Chinese to my daughters, ages 6 1/2 and 10 1/2 (and my husband) as well as to myself. Public schools being what they are today with the current dummying down effect inflicted by "No Child Left Behind" & etc. (and no, I am NOT a full-time homeschooler), I have always felt that the parents of smart kids NEED to supplement their family's public school experience with home instruction according to their personal interests. This book(along with Tuttle's 250 Essential Chinese characters, vol. 1 & 2 AND Schuam's outlines) are what we are starting off our learning process with. My kids are very excited with what we are discovering in our studies. This is not just work for them, its fun. I highly reccomend this kind of family project to other parents. Medical studies have shown that a brain that is continued to be challenged is one that far less often falls prey to the terrible decline into dementia. If you think of Mandarin as a giant "acrostic puzzle" and leave your preconceptions dumped at the door, adventure awaits!
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