Right Reads

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Insight Guides - China (with the Discovery Channel)
(ISBN: 978-981-4137-78-2)

Instead of Lonely Planet, we got this travel guide for China as we wanted “great pictures, which vividly convey a sense of everyday life”. Heck, we are going to live in this country, best to see hat everyday life is like, right?

A partnership with the Discovery Channel, this guide promises to be:

everything you’ll ever need in a guidebook. It is an inspiring background read, an invaluable on-the-spot companion and a superb souvenir of your visit.

The photographs are definitely a good reason to get this book. Browsing through the 350 page book had me wanting to visit picturesque and intriguing places like Gugong (the Forbidden City), the Great Wall, Xinjiang, Wuxi, Hangzhou, Guizhou, Fuzhou, Kunming, Tibet and Qinghai. Sanxia (The Three Gorges) and Sichuan were at the top of my list too until the recent tragedy…

Another good thing about this guide is the introductory section, which outlines the history, beliefs, culture and cuisine of China. I learned a lot of things about the mainland Chinese reading just this section!

I also got a better idea of how Chungguo (the Middle Kingdom) is organized through the sections on northern, southern, central and western China. This is very helpful for someone whose geography isn’t the best subject and also that certain Chinese cities can be mistaken for one another i.e. Zhejiang, Chang Jiang, Henan, Hainana, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Jiangsu etc.

The guide also has a different way of keeping practical information on travel, transport, hotels, restaurants etc separate from the background reading. This is really great as you can immediately flip to the section that you’re looking for, unlike it being embedded with all other info in Lonely Planet.

However, I found the sections on upcoming cities (e.g. Xiamen) lacking in info, with most concentrated on ‘popular’ cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming etc. All other guidebooks already focus on these hot spots, why not be go off the beaten path?

Also, I would have liked the hotels section to be more comprehension, especially as I was hoping that this “everything you’ll need in a guidebook” would be of some help for our impending holiday.

In the end, I fell back on this good old link for some insight (pun intended)!

For a guidebook that you’d naturally want to tote with you, this hefty volume is quite a load. For a guidebook that’s meant to travel with the traveller, I have a feeling that pack-as little-as you-can folks will leave this book at home in favour of lightweight Lonely Planet.

Popularity: 15% [?]

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Tags: non-fiction, travel // Add Comment »

Let’s Get Ready for First Grade! by Linda Desimowich and Stacey Kannenberg
(ISBN: 1-933476-10-9)

Grade 1 is when children enter the “real” school i.e. elementary school. This is when things start getting serious and games, toys, naps and other “baby” stuff related to kindergarten are things of the past.

In this book, the authors introduce Ms. Best (Mrs. Good was the teacher in “Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten“). Hmm…is this an unconscious word play on “good, better, best?”

Anyway, Mrs. Best tells the reader this wonderful message,

“You are unique, which means not like anyone else…”

Another cast of characters from the “Cedar Valley kids” is introduced: Barack, Chan, Dallas, Minda, Gabriell, Sam and Yodie the coyote before kids get to know vowels, consonants and long and short vowel sounds.

A point of note is the subtle colouring for the vowels contained in the alphabet - a great way to know immediately if your child is colour blind. Provided he already knows vowels from consonants, the colour-blind child may not be able to tell you that they are a different shade from the rest of the letters.

I love the big, bold-coloured illustrations that accompany the learning of new words and concepts - they definitely make reading the book an appealing one!

Also, the book is sturdy and well-laminated to withstand clumsy fingers flipping through the pages quickly. The slick surface also allows more interaction from the kids as they can scribble using felt tip markers.

Yodie the coyote plays a bigger role here in making things realistic i.e. rolling on a tube to show that it’s a cylinder in use, flossing his fangs, eating 1/6 of a pizza, wearing a watch and being a judge!

If the authors are out to challenge assumptions, casting a wily coyote as a judge is certainly a brave and bold attempt LOL

I was hoping to see more of the children from various cultural backgrounds but they hardly made an impact in the book. Other than the Comic San Serif font, which I’d already mentioned in the earlier book review , I couldn’t make any sense out of the coloured tabs found on every page.

For further editions, the author may want to consider making more use out of the coloured tabs instead of using them for the sake of having a colourful book

Popularity: 36% [?]

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Tags: elementary // 1 Comment »

Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten by Linda Desimowich and Stacey Kannenberg
ISBN: 1-933476-00-1

One of a set of 2 books recently released by Cedar Valley Publishing, “Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten” begins with an introduction by Mrs Good, the class teacher, who welcomes the students to a class for “children of all ages and stages of learning development”.

She encourages the reader to:

learn at their own pace,

keep reading it over and over again,

be positive,

listen,

ask questions and

make this adventure fun!

Unlike other pre-K books, I like this book for the 2 lists of:
a) early childhood skills that parents and teachers should introduce to the child and
b) tips for parents and caregivers on how to bring out the best in their child.

Lucas and I had a lot of fun reading this book as he:

• pointed out purple A, red B and green C; identified O and Q (another O…),
• identified most of the items associated with each letter of the alphabet,
• named each colour,
• pointed out familiar shapes,
• placed his right and left hands in the funky-coloured cut-outs,
• identified the numbers associated with his trains ie Thomas No. 1, Gordon No. 4, Percy No. 6, James No. 5 etc and
• pointed out parts of the body

…and we ended the book there as he lost interest after that! Nevertheless, for a book meant for kids aged 2-6, I’d say it did a good job sustaining his attention for as far as 16 pages…

I like having Mrs. Good’s face at the bottom of each page, with a tip to guide parents/child for each activity. I’d imagine Lucas would have more fun with it as he gets older as I plan to teach him to memorize his home telephone number and other essential info included in this book.

A step-by-step guide for writing out each letter of the alphabet is at the back of the book to help the preschooler. I also like the calendar feature, which invites the reader to pencil in the days of his/her birthday month.

A diverse group of kids, known as the “Cedar Valley kids”, appear on every page - I’m guessing that the authors have a VCD series in the works. Kids who start with these 2 books will know Amy, Ricardo, Tatiana, Omar, Bo, Rafferty and Peek-a-Blue the hippo when they see them again…

My pet peeve with the book is the Comic Sans Serif font used. This font may look fun but I get really irritated when I need to read anything in this font. I wonder if the authors will consider another type of fun font for the next editions?

Popularity: 30% [?]

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Tags: preschool // 3 Comments »