Jeff P

reviewed The Hungry Pig: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 1200 Word Vocabulary Level (Journey…

Notes from the author December 8, 2019
Hi, as usual I’m the author of this book (along with my translator partner Xiao Hui Wang), and here’s the first review. Just breaking the ice for reader reviews!

This book continues the saga of the monk Tangseng as he journeys across China to India in search of a set of holy books. Tangseng is accompanied by the powerful but erratic monkey king Sun Wukong, but in this book we meet another disciples, the pig-man called Zhu Bajie. The story starts off with an interesting tale of how Tangseng and Sun Wukong arrive in a small village and are told that a farmer’s daughter has been imprisoned by an ugly monster, only to discover that the truth is more complicated than that. The monster of course is Zhu Bajie, who ends up joining Tangseng’s band on their westward journey, encountering adversaries along the way.

This is the 8th book in our series but only the second to use the expanded 1200 word vocabulary. It’s suitable for all ages, and is really fun to read. Hope you like it!

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Jeff P

reviewed The Monster of Black Wind Mountain: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 1200 Word…
2 of 2 people found the following helpful

Notes from the author November 10, 2019
As usual, I like to write the first Amazon review of our books, just to break the ice. This was a fun book to write. Our first six books in the series were all based on a 600 word Chinese vocabulary more or less based on the official HSK 3 vocabulary. That was fine for the first books in the series, but many readers contacted us and asked for some more challenging material. So we decided to go with an expanded vocabulary, a 1200 word list that includes ALL the new words that we introduced in the first six books, plus the original HSK 3 list. This has given us a lot more flexibility (about twice as much!) in telling the story. We’ve also gone with a slightly longer length, about 8000 English words long, and we’ve expanded the number of illustrations from 6 to 10. So all in all, it’s a thicker book.

The story itself is really fun. We start off with an encounter with a river-dwelling dragon, who (no surprise here) turns out to be a lot more than just an ordinary dragon. The second part of the book tells the story of the travelers’ arrival at a monastery where they ask for a meal and a place to sleep for the night. Of course things don’t go well, and Sun Wukong has to use all his wits to save his companions while not incurring the wrath of his master. Tricky job!

Well, we hope you enjoy the book! And keep your eyes open for more books using the new expanded vocabulary. They’re so much fun to write! 🙂

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Socialitelady

reviewed The Immortal Peaches: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey…

Good chinese practice October 24, 2019
Such a good story to read, to keep up with my chinese! I want to buy more! I love how it comes in character, pinyin and English.

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dragonphoenix

reviewed Dao De Jing in Clear English: Including a Step by Step Translation (Step-by-Step Transl…

explainable and nice to know how to write and pinyin pronoucation of philosophy October 13, 2019
I like to read lao Tzu – do te ching words of wisdom, philosophy of the way of life to keep going for the better understanding of worldly systems well written and thanks for the hard work to publish the book I will always keep this book even read again and again. If you have another same as same as this version with Chinese writing/pinyin/English let me know I like to learn and read and write Chinese .

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Jim Rodda

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…

Builds confidence for beginning and intermediate students June 30, 2019
I’m an adult learner who’s been studying Chinese for years and this is the first text I’ve been able to read cover to cover without assistance. Most of the grammar is simple, making the story easy to follow.

This book contains are a few higher-level sentences and concepts sprinkled throughout the text that will challenge a beginning and intermediate reader. These abstractions keep the challenge interesting without being frustrating.

The pinyin on the left pages is a nice supplement to the characters to make sure you get the tones right when reading the characters on the right out loud. The glossary in the back is helpful, especially with words that seldom show up in common conversation.

I’d love to see an HSK4 version of this same text so that I can revisit the story at a higher level once I improve.

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Fishdocdad

reviewed Dao De Jing in Clear English: Including a Step by Step Translation (Step-by-Step Transl…
1 of 1 people found the following helpful

Fastest book shipper, like ever!! 👍👍 June 18, 2019
Great book so far. Quality paper and binding. Fast as heck shipping. Thank you so much 👍

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Clifton Brock

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
3 of 3 people found the following helpful

Great book for learners May 24, 2019
Loved it– the format is perfect for learners. With the pinyin and English reference I never have to skip words I don’t know or use my dictionary. The English is great too because I can read my kids the story and they can enjoy some culture without knowing Chinese. Also, the English translation in the back is more useful than a glossary because sometimes with Chinese, due to grammatical differences from English, I understand every single word individually but still have no idea what they are saying. Very helpful translation. Well done! Much appreciation to the authors for making this story fun and accessible to me.

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Cameron

reviewed The Immortal Peaches: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey…

Great books, kinda expensive. May 14, 2019
This is a great series of graded readers, would be 5 stars, but each volume is a little too short.

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Socialitelady

reviewed The Young Monk: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey to…

Amazing! May 7, 2019
I really like this book, how it is in character and pinyin. It’s also a great price too! The book is well made too. I want the author to make more of these kinds of book.

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Socialitelady

reviewed Trouble in Heaven: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary Level (Journey…

Great book! March 24, 2019
I really like this story. It is really good. It has the story in pinyin, character and in English. It also have vocabulary words. I will for sure buy more of the author’s book.

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Tiago S.

reviewed Dao De Jing in Clear English: Including a Step by Step Translation (Step-by-Step Transl…
3 of 3 people found the following helpful

Beatiful translation. But the chinese text in simplified form? March 23, 2019
Beatiful translation. Simple and concise. However, the bilingual text utilize the simplified chinese. A chinese classic must be presented and studied in its original form: the traditional chinese characters. Pity. Nevertheless, besides the beatiful translation, the book is very helpful to anyone who wants to discover and understand the logic from the ancient chinese writing, and how to read it in different ways.

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I-FANG WANG

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…

nice book with internet resource March 20, 2019
english at the end. good

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TKC

reviewed The Immortal Peaches: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey…

great concept February 27, 2019
Great for adult learner — engagingly but accessibly written for advanced beginner/intermediate reader.

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Socialitelady

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
1 of 1 people found the following helpful

A must buy for learning Chinese! February 26, 2019
This has been the book I have been searching for. I had wanted more books for HSK level 3! Thank you for the publisher of this book and the writer, for helping make this! It is nice to keep up on my chinese. I will definitely buy more book. The books are easy to read and I like the dictionary definitions if you don’t know the main characters!

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Jeff P

reviewed The Art of War: A Step-by-Step Translation
13 of 13 people found the following helpful

Why we wrote this book February 7, 2019
I’m the author of this book, along with my writing partner Xiao Hui Wang. We created this book to provide you, the reader, with not just a translation but the tools for doing your own translation. Obviously it’s hard for you to translate a book from 2500-year-old Chinese without speaking Chinese! So we’ve done the next best thing: we’ve shown every word in the original, then the phonetic spelling of the word, and finally the direct English translation of the word. In cases where a direct translation is difficult or impossible, we’ve provided notes to explain the different possible meanings of the word. The result is, I hope, something that will help anyone, even if they don’t speak a word of Chinese, to uncover the deep meanings of this timeless book. We hope you like it!

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Barbara J. Casey

reviewed Dao De Jing in Clear English: Including a Step by Step Translation (Step-by-Step Transl…

Good read January 12, 2019
Good read

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David Palmer

reviewed Dao De Jing in Clear English: Including a Step by Step Translation (Step-by-Step Transl…
4 of 4 people found the following helpful

Very helpful — ideal for language learners and practitioners December 26, 2018
This is a beautiful translation of the Daodejing, but far more than that. And it’s more than a juxtaposition of the Chinese text with the translation, line by line. The Chinese text is provided in multiple versions: reproduction of a traditional, unpunctuated edition, chapter by chapter; as well as line-by-line Chinese version in simplified characters with pinyin, and word-by-word English equivalents of Chinese characters. A discussion at the end of the book explains what is known about the text and how it has been commented and translated over the ages. A useful glossary and list of additional links and alternative translations are also provided. In short, this is an excellent resource for those who want to get directly to the original text of the Daodejing, and will be useful not only for Chinese learners but those who have no knowledge of the language as well as those who are fluent in reading Chinese. Highly recommended!

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M.B.

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
6 of 6 people found the following helpful

Fantastic resource for learning! October 30, 2018
As someone who’s been learning Chinese for several years, I have struggled to find interesting reading materials for my level. Enter my new best friend Jeff Pepper (No relation to the Sargeant).
Reading has been far from priority for me over my learning and I’ve recently started to put in extra effort to improve that facet of my Chinese ability.
I was so excited to find this series of graded Chinese readers because not only is it level appropriate (maybe a hair above my comfort but that is what I need to improve) but it is an interesting story that I have heard about often and wanted to read for some time. Too often the reading material available is either news (not bad, but not always captivating), or uninteresting, repetitive conversations or stories. “What do you want to buy? Four apples please! Here are four apples! How much?” and so on. If you’re considering this book chances are you know what I mean haha
The story is presented in Pinyin, then Hanzi on the following page, which lets you get a preview for pronunciation, or refer to the pinyin if you don’t know a character. At the bottom of the Hanzi pages, it offers a few select words and their meanings. Then presented in English later in the book. Not only that, but even if you don’t purchase the book, the audio edition is available on Youtube!
The story itself is about 86 pages (total pages of Pinyin, Hanzi and English).
I’m only a few pages in but I’m so happy to be able to read and understand something interesting.
I plan to read it multiple times, as well as playing the audio while reading the Chinese.
Just happy to find this resource and I’m sure I’ll be working my way through the whole series.

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Jeff P

reviewed Dao De Jing in Clear English (Pocket Edition)
3 of 3 people found the following helpful

Why we wrote this book October 22, 2018
I’m the author of this book, along with my writing partner Xiao Hui Wang. We created this book to provide you, the reader, with an affordable version of our longer book, “Dao De Jing in Clear English With Step by Step Translation”. This book is only 116 pages and contains the final English translation but not all the details on how the original Chinese was translated. It’s also smaller, so it will fit in your pocket. It’s written in crystal clear modern English, and captures (we hope!) the essence of this timeless classic. We hope you like it!

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Roni Batzion

reviewed Dao De Jing in Clear English: Including a Step by Step Translation (Step-by-Step Transl…
7 of 7 people found the following helpful

Excellence in all respects September 4, 2018
This is an excellent translation. Each saying from the Dao De Jing has four pages dedicated to it: the first page is the modern English translation, then the second page is the original Chinese. Then there is a transliteration and an explanation on the next two pages. This is absolutely one of the best treatments of a book originally written in another language that I have ever found. I’m buying another copy as a gift. Anyone learning Chinese, interested in Oriental religion, or wisdom literature in general, will love this book.

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Albert

reviewed The Journey Begins: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey…
2 of 2 people found the following helpful

My favorite series for learning chinese August 10, 2018
Great for learning Chinese. The pinyin being set on the facing page instead of above the characters makes it harder to just rely on pinyin. A great way to learn.

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guojie417

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
1 of 1 people found the following helpful

The quality of the book is very good, the content translation is very good July 29, 2018
The quality of the book is very good, the content translation is very good, and the mailing is very smooth.

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Andrea

reviewed Trouble in Heaven: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary Level (Journey…
1 of 1 people found the following helpful

Great buy July 17, 2018
I am incredibly happy with this purchase. It’s action packed and a page turning read. You forget you’re learning Mandarin. The story is safe for teenagers, is very well written, and has a ton of helpful material to go with it. I wish this was offered in a traditional character version. I would recommend this for highschool students or College students looking for an interesting way to sharpen their reading comprehension.

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Andrea

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
6 of 6 people found the following helpful

the book was incredibly interesting and I loved reaching the end of each page June 8, 2018
The left hand page has pinyin. The right page has mandarin characters. At the very bottom of each page in the story there are small definitions for any newly introduced vocab.The very back of the book has the English translation and a little farther contains a dictionary of mandarin to English. This book aims to help, not hinder, every step you take in learning mandarin.

The Monkey King was a tad short (a bit over 100 pages). However, the book was incredibly interesting and I loved reaching the end of each page! Some Chinese readers are so bland that it feels like my eyes are eating stale bread. There was a lot of care put into making this reader exceptionally smooth and well paced for the learner as well as enjoyable. A++ (Satisfied)

P.S. Release a traditional version!

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Jeff P

reviewed Dao De Jing in Clear English: Including a Step by Step Translation (Step-by-Step Transl…
29 of 29 people found the following helpful

Why we wrote this May 11, 2018
I’m the author of this book, along with my writing partner Xiao Hui Wang. We created this book to provide you, the reader, with not just a translation but the tools for doing your own translation. Obviously it’s hard for you to translate a book from 2500-year-old Chinese without speaking Chinese! So we’ve done the next best thing: we’ve shown every word in the original, then the phonetic spelling of the word, and finally the direct English translation of the word. In cases where a direct translation is difficult or impossible, we’ve provided notes to explain the different possible meanings of the word. The result is, I hope, something that will help anyone, even if they don’t speak a word of Chinese, to uncover the deep meanings of this timeless book. We hope you like it!

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grindelli

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
2 of 3 people found the following helpful

Great story, one huge miss May 8, 2018
This book was a really enjoyable read. I finished it in 2 days which is saying something because I usually don’t fly through books like that. What I am disappointed about is that the rest of the series are also written at an HSK 3 level. Shouldn’t the author assume that the reader is increasing in his/her ability to read characters? I don’t plan on reading the rest of the series, unfortunately, because though I think the story would continue to be engaging it will be of no help to my learning of the language. If I can be so bold, I recommend Mr. Pepper update later books with increasingly difficult vocabulary so that the reader is forced to learn and improve before as they read further into the story.

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guojie417

reviewed Trouble in Heaven: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary Level (Journey…

printing is very beautiful. April 3, 2018
Content is suitable for children to read, printing is very beautiful.

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guojie417

reviewed The Young Monk: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey to…

printing is very beautiful. April 3, 2018
Content is suitable for children to read, printing is very beautiful.

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guojie417

reviewed The Journey Begins: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey…

printing is very beautiful. April 3, 2018
Content is suitable for children to read, printing is very beautiful.

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guojie417

reviewed The Emperor in Hell: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey…

printing is very beautiful. April 3, 2018
Content is suitable for children to read, printing is very beautiful.

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Gebo

reviewed The Young Monk: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey to…
2 of 2 people found the following helpful

I like this series very much! March 27, 2018
I am a beginner in learning Chinese and I like this series of books very much. The story is interesting with lots of unexpected things to happen. More important as the story itself is perhaps the good conception of the books. There is not much choice of Chinese readers with Pinyin Text (even not without) – of course you could work with scanning and OCR tools, then google translator. But that’s a lot of work and not error free… This books can be used “stand alone” without the help of dictionarys or the internet.
I also love the audio recordings, they are of good quality and resonably clear and slowly spoken, but the impression is not artifical, more as if you would tell the story to your child – and that in fact is the frame of the books. There is also no annoying intro music or something alike.
This book series is worth every penny and with every book you will learn better Chinese, because the vocabulary is from book to book developing. That is good. A lot of praise – but someone has to do it!

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stefanie

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
1 of 1 people found the following helpful

Five Stars January 30, 2018
it is a really good book, I would like to use this book in my class.

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Jeff P

reviewed Dragon Island: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin for Beginning Readers (Chinese …
1 of 1 people found the following helpful

Wonderful book for English-speaking children learning Chinese January 28, 2018
I’m the editor and publisher of this wonderful little book, and I’d like to give you a little background about it. Yu Jin, the author, runs a graphic arts business in China. I was looking for someone to illustrate a series of books I was writing for beginning Chinese readers (see product link), and I was really impressed with Yu’s work and hired him. As we were working together on my book series, he told me about a book for children that he had written and had illustrated with help from the team at his company. I saw the book and loved it. So we worked together for about six months to prepare the book for an American audience. This is the result.

Unlike most children’s books written in Chinese, this is geared towards English-speaking children. Each page is mostly illustration, but it also has five lines of Chinese, written in both simplified characters and pinyin. Below that is a translation in English. And in the back is a complete glossary of all words used in the book.

The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary Level (Journey to the West) (Volume 1) (Chinese Edition)

I love this book, and I hope it helps your kids learn to read and understand Chinese!

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Jeff P

reviewed The Journey Begins: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey…
6 of 6 people found the following helpful

We had fun writing this book! January 27, 2018
We had fun writing this book!

I’m the author of this book, and the other books in our Journey to the West series, and I always like to break the ice by submitting the first review.

To start off, I humbly give this book five stars 🙂 Xiao Hui and I really had fun with this. It’s by far the longest book in the series, coming in at 166 pages including the Chinese, pinyin and English versions, the foreword and the glossary, This is about 50 or 60 pages longer than the other books in the series. Why so long? For one thing, you probably have noticed that as a series progresses, authors tend to pack more material into each book. See the J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and George R. R. Martin’s Songs of Fire and Ice series for two obvious examples. But beyond that, I felt that our readers should be gaining competency in reading and understanding Chinese as they work their way through the series, so we should reward them by giving them a more substantial book to read. So rather than stripping down the story to its bare bones, we allowed ourselves to explore the scenes in a bit more detail this time.

Hope you are enjoying the series. We’re delighted to see the success of these books, and would love to see your reviews!

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Junwen Deng

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
1 of 1 people found the following helpful

Perfect! December 22, 2017
I am not quite, but essentially an ABC (“American-Born Chinese”). I grew up speaking Chinese but not really learning how to read/write it. This is helping me learn how to read Chinese again. And the Monkey King is such a Chinese classic, it’s not to be missed.

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Elizabeth Weise

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
3 of 3 people found the following helpful

I liked a lot that the English was not on the … December 19, 2017
I’ve got kids in a Mandarin immersion program and they said this was at about a 5th of 6th grade level for them. I liked a lot that the English was not on the same page as the characters – too many books do that and then the kids don’t read the Chinese. Seeing as many MI programs have the kids learn the Monkey King stories, it’s nice to have a version in Chinese that’s readable for MI students. Too many of the versions out there, especially the picture books, are meant for native Chinese speakers and presume a much higher level of literacy than students in the US could have. This really hits a nice sweet spot for middle school kids in MI programs.

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Jeff P

reviewed The Emperor in Hell: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey…
4 of 4 people found the following helpful

A few comments by the author December 17, 2017
I’m the author, and just want to write a brief intro to the book, and also break the ice and encourage other readers to submit reviews.

This is our fifth book in the Journey to the West series, and in my humble opinion, they just keep getting better and better. In this book we put one of the last major pieces in place before the actual start of the journey, which occurs in Book 6. In this book, we start off with what appears to be a harmless bit of conversation between a fisherman and a woodcutter, as they stumble home after an evening of eating and drinking at a local inn. Their conversation is overheard by a river spirit, setting events in motion that will eventually lead to the demise of a supposedly immortal being, and the entrapment in the underworld of the Tang Emperor. It’s a great story, and Xiao Hui and I had a wonderful time adapting it to our “easy reading” style. We hope you enjoy it, and all the other books in the series!

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Jeff P

reviewed The Young Monk: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey to…
2 of 2 people found the following helpful

Notes from the author October 16, 2017
I’m the author of this book. As usual, I’m writing the first book review, just to break the ice.

This book is the fourth installment in our series based on the Chinese classic novel “Journey to the West”. The others are “Rise of the Monkey King”, “Trouble in Heaven” and “The Immortal Peaches”. All are available on Amazon.

Unlike the first three books in the series which focused on Sun Wukong, in this book things become more complicated, and more interesting from a plot and character development standpoint. “The Young Monk” is all about the birth and early years of Xuanzang, the monk who will eventually (minor spoiler alert!) lead a small band of adventurers from China to India and back again, to bring the wisdom teachings of the Buddha to the Middle Kingdom.

Unlike the swashbuckling stories of the first three books, this one is all about the timeless human themes of love, loyalty, treachery and revenge. The themes in this book are a bit more adult than the previous three, but it’s still PG rated and suitable for readers of pretty much all ages.

All our books have the same format — each page of Chinese characters is paired with a facing page in pinyin. Proper names are underlined, and each word not in the HSK 3 vocabulary is highlighted and defined in a footnote at the bottom of the page. There’s a complete English translation and a glossary in the back of the book. And I’m happy to report that we now have free audiobook versions available on YouTube as well as on our website.

Along with my collaborator Xiao Hui Wang, we hope you’ll enjoy the story, and if the book helps you to improve your Chinese, so much the better!

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Jeff P

reviewed The Immortal Peaches: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey…
2 of 2 people found the following helpful

A note from the author August 25, 2017
I’m the author of this book. We just published the book today, so here’s the first review!

This book is the third in our series based on the Chinese classic novel “Journey to the West”. The first book is “Rise of the Monkey King” and the second is “Trouble in Heaven”. All are available on Amazon.com.

These three books focus on Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and they form a trilogy of sorts, telling the story of his birth and his adventures prior to meeting the monk Xuangzang and beginning the epic journey to India that takes up most of the “Journey to the West”. Personally this book is my favorite, because of the interesting plot twists, Sun Wukong’s outrageous actions, and what happens to him in the end when he… well, I won’t give away the ending!

All books have the same format — each page of Chinese characters is paired with a facing page in pinyin. Proper names are underlined, and each words not in the HSK 3 vocabulary is highlighted and defined in a footnote at the bottom of the page. There’s a complete English translation and a glossary in the back of the book, and a free audiobook is available on YouTube and on our website. I am an American learning to read and understand Chinese, and I developed this format because I think it’s the best way to learn as you read.

Along with my collaborator Xiao Hui Wang, we hope you’ll enjoy the story, and if the book helps you to improve your Chinese, so much the better!

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umonkey

reviewed Trouble in Heaven: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary Level (Journey…
1 of 1 people found the following helpful

highly recommend August 2, 2017
Very helpful. The pinyin, side by side with the characters, is most helpful to someone like me who is beginner/intermediate level and trying to learn Chinese characters. The pinyin is on the opposite page to the characters which makes it easy to reference while not making it so easy that I end up reverting back to just reading pinyin.

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umonkey

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
6 of 6 people found the following helpful

Great tool! August 2, 2017
The pinyin side by side with the characters is most helpful to someone like me who is beginner/intermediate level and trying to learn Chinese characters. The pinyin is on the opposite page to the characters which makes it easy to reference while not making it so easy that I end up reverting back to just reading pinyin. Very helpful!

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Amazon Customer

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
2 of 2 people found the following helpful

It’s a really great book! I used this book as reading text … July 30, 2017
It’s a really great book! I used this book as reading text to teach Chinese language. And my students finds it’s a classic story line and not too difficult to comprehend.

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Frank

reviewed Trouble in Heaven: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary Level (Journey…
1 of 1 people found the following helpful

Good introduction to one of most enduring character of Chinese culture July 17, 2017
This book and its sister book are excellent for people who are learning Chinese. They tell the stories of the Monkey King, one of the most enduring characters in Chinese culture in an easy to understand manner. They also provide good reference for the Chinese characters used in the stories and their English translations. Well done!

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Frank

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
6 of 6 people found the following helpful

Good introduction to one of most enduring character of Chinese culture July 17, 2017
This book and its sister book are excellent for people who are learning Chinese. They tell the stories of the Monkey King, one of the most enduring characters in Chinese culture in an easy to understand manner. They also provide good reference for the Chinese characters used in the stories and their English translations. Well done!

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Jeff P

reviewed Trouble in Heaven: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary Level (Journey…
3 of 3 people found the following helpful

Author’s comments on the book July 11, 2017
I’m the author of this book. If you’re reading this review, then I’m happy to report that Amazon allows authors to review their own books!

“Trouble in Heaven” is the second in a series of books based on the Chinese classic story Journey to the West. (the first is “Rise of the Monkey King”.) My collaborator Xiao Hui Wang and I have developed this series of books for people who are learning to read Chinese, but unlike some other easy-to-read books in this genre, we have tried to focus on writing good quality fiction that will appeal to readers of all ages.

Each page of Chinese is paired with a facing page of pinyin. Every word that’s not in the standard 600-word HSK 3 vocabulary is defined in a footnote at the bottom of the page where it first appears. Proper names are all underlined. And there’s a complete English version and glossary in the back. Our website also has a complete audio recording of the book, as well as study questions for classroom use.

We hope you’ll enjoy the books!

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Jeff P

reviewed The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary…
8 of 8 people found the following helpful

Author’s comments on the book July 11, 2017
I’m the author of this book. Well, someone has to write the first review, right?

The idea for this book came to me about a year ago, when I was looking for some good quality, easy-to-read fiction books in Chinese. I found lots of books for very young kids, but almost nothing geared for adults or older kids. The exceptions are the very good books by Terry Waltz, but even those were targeted towards young teens and didn’t have the deeper themes that I was looking for. So I decided to write some books myself. I chose Journey to the West as the subject matter, because it’s a terrific story for people of all ages, and holds a special place in Chinese culture. This book, Rise of the Monkey King, is the first in a series of books based on Journey to the West, and has been written in collaboration with Xiao Hui Wang, my Chinese language collaborator.

We’ve done some innnovative things to make the books as readable as possible. First, we’ve focused on writing high quality fiction, so the book (we hope) will stand on its own as a good story and not come across as just a collection of vocabulary words strung together. Also, each page of Chinese is paired with a facing page of pinyin. Every word that’s not in the standard 600-word HSK 3 vocabulary is defined in a footnote at the bottom of the page where it first appears. Proper names are all underlined. And there’s a complete English version and glossary in the back.

We hope you’ll enjoy the story, and if the book helps you to improve your Chinese, so much the better!

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