At the Beach

I discovered this book before I became a teacher, and read it to my (then) 3 year old daughter. She learned the characters from having us read her the book (at her request) night after night before bed! I love the way the characters are pictured so that children can remember the meanings, for example, standing with arms and legs spread wide to mean big, or "da" and bowed with arms at the side to represent small, or "xiao." I teach 5 - 7 year old children at Chinese School and I use this book in class to teach the characters and I have the children actually physically "be" the character, and that helps them remember the words much easier! I have the entire series of books by Huy Voun Lee and LOVE them and have incorporated them all into my curriculum.

Having recently adopted a beautiful toddler from China, we have purchased all the books by this author to start teaching her (and ourselves) a little Chinese. The author has a lovely style of teaching the pictures behind the pictograms. A great book (as are all by this author)!

This book will allow my Chinese-Vietnamese students to share their writing and culture with other students in my class. It allows me to understand the written Chinese language better myself. Excellent!

By drawing pictures in the sand a mother teachers her young son how to write Chinese characters. This is a marvelous idea, reminding us how thousands of years ago Chinese people took sticks and scratched pictures in the mud, thus inventing the very first Chinese characters. In this book we learn how to draw the characters for the words "person," "big," "small,""sky,""water," "mountain," "sand," "woman," "child" and "good." Through beautiful cut paper illustrations we can easily see the similarities between characters and real life objects. Huy Voun Lee is the talented writer and illustrator of two other books in this series - "In the Park" and "In the Snow." I highly recommend all three.

my daughter from China and I love all the books written by this author. This is the best one and we share it with anyone who visits us at the beach. We practice making Chinese symbols in the sand ourselves.