Book Review: The Pet Dragon
I just read a fun book called 
The Pet Dragon: A Story about Adventure, Friendship, and Chinese Characters. I first learned about it from the blog Big Boy and Xiao Chien and then found it in our local library.
This lovely book was written by Christoph Niemann, who incorporated 33 Chinese characters into his wonderful illustrations to tell a story about a girl named Lin and her baby dragon. Lin and her dragon played hide-and-seek, made new friends, played ping pong, and told stories to one other. After a minor mishap, Lin's dragon suddenly disappeared. Lin searched far and wide for her friend. Would she ever find him?
Overall, this is a nice introduction to Chinese characters for young children. I loved how Mr. Niemann integrated the Chinese characters into his drawings, and I'm pleased that the English translations were provided. It would have been even better if the pinyin was provided, as well, so that we could all learn how to pronounce the Chinese words and could practice speaking them, too.
*Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
Comments
I'm glad you checked out the
I'm glad you checked out the book! We've had it for quite awhile and my son still requests it often. He has picked up a lot of characters specifically from this book, though the "yan" (speak) one he declares means "where is my dragon? What happened to my baby dragon? Where did my dragon go?!!!" LOL! And yes, I really wish they had put the pinyin, as even I don't know how they are all pronounced... that funny character means "witch" but I couldn't use it in a chinese sentence!
One thing I found this book great for was overcoming my son's reluctance towards chinese in books... this really inspired him to look at other books we have that are only in Chinese, and play with our Kingka game.
Thanks for the review!
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