This winning overview of Chinese life and culture offers kids a good introduction to life in another country.
Young readers can use this picture book to travel to China and learn about everyday life and culture from the point of view of a child who lives there.
This latest children’s book in Roman’s (A Flag for the Flying Dragon, 2015, etc.) cultural series focuses on the Middle Kingdom and offers a look at what life is like for kids in the Asian country. Just as in prior volumes, which traveled to Scotland, Greece, Mexico, and other locales, this book explains the land’s culture, customs, and everyday life from the perspective of a young native. It opens with a map of the world to show where China is located and then describes China’s geography and landforms as well as its history; she notes, for example, that people have lived in Beijing for more than 3,000 years and that the city is “the political, cultural and education center of China.” She also takes what American kids know and understand and then compares it to their peers’ lives in China—for instance, American kids go to school, and Chinese kids go to “xue xiao.” She also describes Chinese sports; popular holiday traditions, such as Chinese New Year; common Chinese names; and what Chinese children call their parents. Roman describes how people in different regions of China eat different types of food: people in Beijing make Mandarin cuisine, those in the south make Cantonese food, and those in the southwest make Szechuan fare. With colorful illustrations and photographs and a warm, engaging tone, Roman’s books continue to appeal to young readers interested in other cultures. The text is well-researched and organized, with each page devoted to one topic with a corresponding image. Since many of the vocabulary words will be unfamiliar, Roman offers in-text pronunciation as well as a pronunciation guide at the back of the book. It’s a useful tool for both teachers and parents who want to inform children about geography early in life.
This winning overview of Chinese life and culture offers kids a good introduction to life in another country.Pub Date: May 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5114-4084-4
Page Count: 30
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
From the artist who created last year's shoutingly vivid Growing Vegetable Soup, a companion volume about raising a flower garden. "Mom and I" plant bulbs (even rhizomes), choose seeds, buy seedlings, and altogether grow about 20 species. Unlike the vegetables, whose juxtaposed colors were almost painfully bright, the flowers make a splendidly gaudy array, first taken together and then interestingly grouped by color—the pages vary in size here so that colored strips down the right-hand side combine to make a broad rainbow. Bold, stylish, and indubitably inspired by real flowers, there is still (as with its predecessor) a link missing between these illustrations with their large, solid areas of color and the real experience of a garden. The stylized forms are almost more abstractions than representations (and why is the daisy yellow?). There is also little sense of the relative times for growing and blooming—everything seems to come almost at once. Perhaps the trouble is that Ehlert has captured all the color of the garden, but not its subtle gradations or the light, the space, the air, and the continual movement and change.
Pub Date: March 21, 1988
ISBN: 0152063048
Page Count: 66
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1988
A fun and engaging introduction to Mexico for the younger set.
Young armchair travelers are invited to join a treasure hunt around Mexico while learning a few Spanish words and geographical facts along the way.
The first double-page spread presents a colorful map of Mexico with some of the objects readers will find over the course of their journey as well as a few quick facts about Mexico. A series of colorful and kid-friendly double-page spreads depict landmarks, customs, and foods to be found in different locales, always following the same format: A scene is depicted, basic information is presented in rhyming text, an object must be found, and a “DID YOU KNOW” fun fact appears. To aid children in their search, the object to be located usually is depicted with an aura or stars around it. Words in Spanish are printed in boldface and then presented phonetically. In Mexico City, for example, amid modern skyscrapers, children are invited to locate the statue of El Angel, before reading the “DID YOU KNOW?” fact: The statue is “covered with 24K gold!” There is a commercial angle to the outing, as children are encouraged at the end of the book to visit the website where they can get stickers for each object found in addition to other, related material for sale. The compositions are busy for younger board-book readers, but older toddlers and preschoolers should enjoy it.
A fun and engaging introduction to Mexico for the younger set. (Board book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-945635-22-9
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Encantos
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
