My First Chinese Reader iBook (Volume 1)

My First Chinese Reader iBook (Volume 1) is a program from Better Chinese, designed for elementary students learning beginning Mandarin.  Asianmommy received a free iBook for review.

Volume 1 contains 12 Chapters, including Hello, What is your name?, How old are you?, What country are you from?, I love my family, Where do you live?, What date is it today?, What is in the backpack?, What do you want to eat?, and more.

Each lesson has an animated story with accompanying simplified characters and Pinyin.  There's a glossary of all the key words with the English translation and an audio component, which allows you to hear the correct pronunciation of the words.  The stroke order of a few characters is taught.  Also, there are review questions to help test your understanding.  At the end of the lessons are Challenge sections, where you are given paragraphs of simplied text to read aloud.

What I liked:  The cartoon characters are cute and engaging.  The material that's covered is practical, commonly used language.  The challenge section has you reading paragraphs of simplified Chinese characters before you know it--Wow!

What could be improved:  The font size of the Pinyin was small in the animated stories, but otherwise fine in the other sections.