Mid Autumn Festival (中秋节 Zhōng qiū jié) is just around the corner, and it’s one of our favourite festivals of the year!
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Here’s a review of what’s on our bookshelf this month, including books across a range of reading abilities, for pre-schoolers to read by themselves, through to books which can be enjoyed by reading together with an adult reading.
We’ve selected a variety of books this year – with the help of Lin Xin at My Story Treasury – which focus on either:
(1) traditions and customs behind the century-old Chinese celebration, or
(2) fun stories about mooncakes, moons and lanterns.
These twelve books can be found in a few different places, but primarily I’ve tried to focus on books which can be borrowed from the local library (in Singapore), or purchased from local online bookstores. Three of the books below are even authored in Singapore, which makes me proud.
It’s easy to associate this festival with just mooncakes and lanterns. Sure, the iconic parts of the festival are lanterns and mooncakes – but there’s so much more history to this harvest festival. The festival is thought to have originated about – 200 BC, when Ancient Chinese emperors worshiped the harvest moon in autumn, in the hope that this would bring them a plentiful harvest the following year. Following the emperors, the people – both rich and poor – prayed to the moon, and often held festivals. The tradition of eating mooncakes during the festival began in the Yuan Dynasty ( – AD), a dynasty ruled by the Mongols. Apparently messages to rebel against the Mongols were passed around in mooncakes.
You can enjoy the history together by considering the following books:
Title: 《大家来过节 1》 新加坡华族传统节日与习俗 Let’s Celebrate! Singaporean Chinese Festivals and Customs
Author: Fu Chong (Frank Fu)
Country of original publication: Singapore
Language: Simplified Chinese
~ Pages in book: 80
~ Lines per page: 7- 21
~Pinyin: No
~ Audio available: No
~ Available in Singapore NLB libraries: Yes
Target age range: 5 and upwards (even adults will learn something!) although note the Chinese reading level is quite hard.
This book is part of a 3 book set which I’ve reviewed previously on Singaporean Festivals and Customs. There’s one book on Malay traditions, one on Indian, and one on local Chinese celebrations.
The hand drawn pictures and matter-of-fact explanations are a special way to dig deeper into the rich cultural heritage in Singapore. The “reference-type” books certainly have a lot of text, but it’s richly peppered with detailed illustrations which are easy to relate to. My children could recognise many of the drawings, and identify them as places we’ve been to or seen before in Singapore, such as Chinatown and Marina Bay. There are a couple of pages in the book dedicated to mooncakes and lanterns, and describing the local ways which Mid-Autumn festival is celebrated here.
The books are cleverly put together, with quirky aspects that would really appeal to a child who likes their facts and figures. I like that children can learn about these traditions in Chinese format, and pick up new characters along the way. My children immediately pointed out the ‘pokeball’ lantern and the ‘minions’ lantern. They also enjoyed trying to decipher what was written on the top of each mooncake.
Language: Simplified Chinese
~ Pages in book: 16
~ Lines per page: ~ 20 – 30 facts per double page
~Pinyin: No
~ Audio available: No
~ Available in Singapore NLB libraries: No (it’s a bit delicate to be a sharing book!)
Target age range: 3 to 12
We don’t have many pop-up books – but this one makes up for all that! It’s physically huge in size (larger than A3 size when opened), and filled with amazing pop-up pages which illustrate Chinese Festivals.
There are two pages specifically for Mid-Autumn festival, showcasing the many different ways this festival is celebrated – from foods, to lanterns, sipping tea, reunions and dancing. My children were fascinated by the family making a lantern out of pomelo to float on the river.
The book covers 8 major festivals, and includes legends and tales too. We plan to get this book out at each festival (Chinese New Year, Dragon Boat, etc) as a special treat. It’s not the type of book you’d read cover-to-cover, but nor does it need to be. There’s just something magical about having a “special” book which comes out for celebrations.
Author: Lin Wenpei
Country of original publication: Singapore
Language: Simplified Chinese
~ Pages per book: 20
~ Lines per page: 5-9
~Pinyin: Yes
~ Audio available: No
~ Available in Singapore NLB libraries: Yes
Target age range: 4 – 8
There’s a wonderful Singaporean author Lin Wenpei, who has written a series of picture books about food in local celebrations, including Mid Autumn Festival. The main characters of the picture books are a courageous sister and a playful brother, who attempt to help their families to prepare festive foods.
Through cartoon style pictures, each page shows the steps in making moon cakes, traditionally prepared at home. The playful sibling duo learn about the different traditions through preparing ingredients, and make some cute blunders along the way. This book crosses the boundary between being a factual book about the festival traditions and a fictional story.
Being authored in Singapore, the illustrations are equally local, and easy to relate to – kids dressed in simple short sleeve clothes and barefoot, rather than traditional autumn wear for Chinese weather!
The book is part of a set of eight cute picture books about food in local Chinese celebrations, which I’ve reviewed in an earlier post.
Author: Cathy Ju Yao
Country of original publication: Taiwan
Language: Simplified Chinese (although Traditional is also available)
~ Pages in book: 8 – 12
~ Lines per page: 1 – 2
~Pinyin: No
~ Audio available: Yes – through Le Le reading pen
~ Available in Singapore NLB libraries: No
Target age range: 3 – 6
These are two short simple books each containing short sentences about Mooncake festival, from the Le Le Chinese Second Set (Yellow Readers). The great thing about these books is that a kindergarten child can read them by themselves. Children will enjoy seeing the mooncakes, pomelos, lanterns and the simple joy of reading about the festival independently.
Author: 保冬妮
Country of original publication: China
Language: Simplified Chinese
Pages: 30
Lines per page: 6
Pinyin: No
Audio available: No
Available in Singapore NLB libraries: Yes
Recommended ages: 5 – 12 with a Chinese speaking adult. For context, my P2 daughter was unable to read this book independently, and the concepts contained would also benefit from adult guidance.
满月 Mǎnyuè is a poignant picture book for children, touching on AIDS, adoption, death, and being grateful, especially at Mid-Autumn festival. I have written a detailed review of this beautiful story in an earlier post. It’s our favourite mid Autumn festival book this year. We would highly recommend this.
Author: Cathy Ju Yao
Country of original publication: Taiwan
Language: Simplified Chinese (although Traditional is also available)
~ Pages in book: 8 – 12
~ Lines per page: 1 – 2
~Pinyin: No
~ Audio available: Yes – through Le Le reading pen
~ Available in Singapore NLB libraries: No
Target age range: 3 – 6
These three short fun ‘moon’ related books are also part of the Le Le Chinese readers set – which I’ve raved about in a separate post.
Le Le Chinese is a series of highly-engaging picture book graded readers, and it has on optional pen which can read the books. The intention of the books is to “literacy through literature” – which is to say that by reading lots of books, the child will naturally pick up characters. The books use common characters from literature, and become progressively harder throughout the 300 books. We enjoyed doing a thematic study on the ‘moon’ related books from this series.
Author/Illustrator: Patrick Yee
Country of original publication: Singapore
Language: Simplified Chinese
~ Pages per book: 30
~ Lines per page: 2 – 7
~Pinyin: Yes
~ Audio available: No
~ Available in Singapore NLB libraries: Yes
Target age range: 5 – 12
This tale follows a young Chinese girl who boards a ship bound for Singapore, in the hope of a better life. She is placed to work at a grand house in Joo Chiat Road, Katong. One of the opening pages has a lovely colourful scene when she alights from the boat, and her first sight is a group of ethnically diverse people at a market and she comments “So this is Nanyang”. She looks after a young boy from diapers until he is old enough to go to the UK for further studies – and one of their memorable experience together is her goldfish lantern, and walking along Chinatown during Mid-Autumn festival with the colourful lantern.
This book is part of a set of books called 狮城往事绘本系列 (Lion City Past Story Series) about heritage traditions in Singapore, which I’ve reviewed earlier too!
Author Patrick Yee has written/illustrated more than 100 books! Gosh I think I’m falling in love with his gorgeous illustrations with rich bright colours and intricate attention to detail.
Author: Gilbert Delahaye
Country of original publication: France
Language: Simplified Chinese
~ Pages per book: 21
~ Lines per page: 10 – 15
~Pinyin: Yes
~ Audio available: Yes – Luka
~ Available in Singapore NLB libraries: No
Target age range: 5 – 12
This is a French book from the s about a Japanese lantern festival: the original French name translates as “Martine at the Flower Festival”, but the Chinese version is “Martine joins the float parade”. Technically it’s nothing to do with the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. However, it highlights that ancient cultures across Asia have been fascinated by the moon, and the changing of seasons, and that they also have a harvest festivals and celebrations with colourful lanterns.
玛蒂娜参加花车游行 is compatible with Luka for audio, which makes it extra fun. If you haven’t discovered the joy of book narrations through Luka yet, please see my earlier post introducing Luka Reading Companion for Chinese storybooks.
In Singapore: Each of the books reviewed in this post (except for Le Le books) can be bought from Children’s bookstores locally in Singapore. Most of the titles listed in this post are available from My Story Treasury (online) if you’re looking for a one-stop solution. My Story Treasury is a lovingly curated collection of Chinese picture story books for kids. Remember my blog readers have a 10% discount if you use “LahLahBanana10” at checkout from their store. There are several other fantastic children’s bookstores in Singapore too who stock some of these books, and buying local is totally the best.
On Taobao – if you really must do this option, look at the end of my Taobao post for recommended bookstores through Taobao’s TMall.
I hope you and your family will read and enjoy some Mid-Autumn Festival books in the upcoming weeks. I’d love to know your favourites too, so we can check them out!
Taobao! It’s the Chinese online shopping platform full of everything you could possibly want, and more. Except, for having an English version.
I understand the struggle when it comes to trying to decipher the Chinese and figure out how to buy from there – apparently it’s even a struggle for those who can read Chinese at times. I used to feel a little left out by this, hearing of the great, cheap purchases that my Mandarin speaking friends had made, and items which seemingly didn’t exist anywhere in the world outside of Taobao.
So this post is twofold – one, I will compare prices of Children’s Chinese books bought directly on Taobao versus through agents; secondly, I will give a guide to show how to order items from Taobao and tips for those of us that cannot read the language.
In our experience, it’s always better to shop locally and support local businesses – and often the price is cheaper anyhow, especially after shipping. We’ve not once been disappointed with a book purchased from an online Singapore bookshop. However, there are sometimes when the books we’re looking for just aren’t available in Singapore, and that’s when we turn to Taobao, or Taobao agents! (and yes, there have been disappointments here, both in terms of the quality of items ordered, or realising the books weren’t as good as we’d hoped).
I did a comparison for four different Chinese bridging books that I was interested in buying, for my 7 year old daughter. The different options I tried ordering from are below:
Here are the results after I searched for the 4 different books which I wanted to buy, but which I couldn’t find locally in Singapore:
Prices are written in SGD on a normal day (ie no sale!).
I’m a stickler for a good deal, and I have to say, whilst Taobao direct ordering is not that difficult, the effort needed to shop directly on Taobao probably isn’t worth it given you’ll likely get a comparable price through a good Taobao agent, without the hassle. Hope the above table demonstrates to you that at least for book buying, you don’t need to have any envy of your Chinese-speaking friends ordering directly from Taobao.
Here’s a little guide to show how English-speakers can still easily buy from Taobao, either by using a good Taobao Agent (best method!), or by exercising extreme patience through the direct website (which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend, by the way, proceed at your own risk!).
There’s a really good graphical English guide on using Taobao, including explanation on how the shipping options work at the following two sites, so I’d recommend having them open when you’re going through the process: https://www.imoney.my/articles/taobao-shopping-guide or https://zula.sg/taobao-english-guide/.
Tips for first time Taobao buyers:
This would be the stress-free way to do it, and costs are quite similar (at least for book buying!). There are two agents with full English websites which we’ve used and would recommend. This is a much easier and less stressful way to get your good delivered! What’s more, as I found out, sometimes the agents websites will have promotions which are better than Taobao.
Agent 1: EZ Buy: In Singapore, a good option is EZ Buy. They don’t have the full set of items available from Taobao, and items are slightly more expensive (5 – 10% more pricey), but they have a good curated collection with much cheaper shipping into Singapore than doing it direct with Taobao. And, you’ll have peace of mind that there aren’t fakes in this mix. The costs are pretty similar in the end, assuming EZ Buy stocks the item you want in their collection.
Agent 2: Taobao Focus: Globally, a great option is TaoBao Focus. TB Focus has the identical prices to Taobao, and identical shipping costs, they just charge a flat agent’s fee (of about USD$10). They let you pay using Paypal, which is also hassle free. I became a big fan on the day which I accidentally ordered (and paid for) 10 books which I hadn’t meant to order. TaoBao Focus agent was able to assist me cancel the order and I got a refund to my Paypal account the next day. I know as a fact this wouldn’t have happened if I’d bought directly from Taobao.
Tips for using Taobao Agents:
Children’s bookstores in TMall with high ratings include:
But, if you’re based in Singapore, please do consider looking in Singapore local bookstores first, as they may stock the same (or even better!!) titles and be cheaper. Good online options for Chinese Children’s bookstore in Singapore are My Story Treasury, Flip for Joy and Books4Tots. Readers of my blog can get a 10% discount at My Story Treasury at checkout through quoting “LahLahBanana10”. Everything is their collection is quality – which is a statement that cannot be said about Taobao.
Habbi Habbi Bilingual Books with their Reading Wand is the fifth Chinese reading pen set to join our house. This is a post I never thought I’d write – because I never imagined there would be a “use case” for five different Chinese Reading Pens. But it turns out there is!
We use our HabbI Habbi Reading Wand as the go-to, dedicated pen for our youngest (toddler) because of its hardcover, durable design and play-based nature (she can tap anywhere and get feedback). There are surprise musical tunes and hidden content beyond the text that is printed on the page, so it’s fun for her to play and discover.
We also find it especially great for less-native families, because it is bilingual (with English and pinyin) – so it is more approachable, especially for those who find Chinese-only resources intimidating (I can really empathize with this, as a monolingual-English parent who doesn’t speak Chinese!).
Also as I will explain more later, the Habbi Habbi book content is distinguishing with themes of empathy, diversity, self reliance, global citizenship, and more. When your kids repeat phrases from these books like “I feel worthy,” “I love my body,” “I admire my mommy. She is capable of anything,” it does tickle your heart.
Disclaimer: I was very kindly gifted the Habbi Habbi Reading Wand and books but have not received any compensation for this review. All opinions shared here are my own, and I made this clear to Habbi Habbi before accepting their product for review. It was a pleasure to review such a fun product.
I like reading pens in general because they remove screen time, and inculcate a love of reading Chinese, without the parent needing to read/speak the language. Habbi Habbi certainly ticks all the boxes on this front too. For our family, we use it for our youngest – more on that later
The Habbi Habbi startup is the brainchild of two working mothers, ex-consultants and long time friends, who loved the Reading Wand technology and wanted to make it contemporary, multilingual, and accessible for a non-native audience. And the thought shows. In much the same way as other reading pens, it will recognise compatible books, and provide an audio overlay saying the word / phrase out loud, or giving other sound effects and cute musical tunes. But, it is really the content of what they write about, the beautiful design, and the fun, play-nature of Habbi Habbi makes it stand out.
Habbi Habbi comes with a set of 20 matching board books (and counting!) – available in Simplified Chinese (within pinyin) or Spanish. The same Wand accesses all their books, regardless of language, so you only need 1 pen to access either language! Apparently more languages are planned, and this includes possibility of Traditional Chinese Books, French, Korean, and more. They also have Habbi Habbi bilingual puzzles and flashcards, which I’ve reviewed separately.
It’s easy to use – just turn on and tap. I simply gave it to my toddler, and she turned it on by holding down the middle button. Then, with just a light tap on the books literally anywhere on the page – the book comes alive.
When we first opened the Habbi Habbi box, I told my three children that this pen was special for the youngest one (just turned three). She was delighted, because ever since she could sit up, she’s always been keen to use our other reading pens. This has long been a source of arguments with the older kids, and frustration for me because I’m always reminding her to be more gentle with the fragile (expensive!) pens and books. Well, when she got her hands on it, she knew exactly what to do! It literally went from the box to being played with, without me even needing to read the instructions.
I like that the book is a fun toddler “toy” – my little one can tap anywhere and get some sort of response – word/phrase/sound/music, with a practical learning outcome (Chinese!) and exposure to highly intentional content (like diversity, inclusiveness and resilience). For a home like ours where the adults aren’t bilingual, a tool like this is perfect to help a very young child pick up Chinese alongside English.
The Wand is rechargeable with a standard-USB cable (comes provided). When it’s charging, the star at the top will glow red, and the glow disappears when fully charged.
The volume is adjustable volume – this good, because when three kids are in the same room using three different pens, it’s nice to have it a little quieter.
There’s also a headphone jack, which could be good for aeroplanes and roadtrips.
In my mind Habbi Habbi is great as a first Reading Pen, for those emphasizing speaking and listening (versus reading and character recognition). Note: Context is important; we live in a Singapore – a Chinese speaking country and are aiming to raise fully bilingual children who can read Chinese, so for us – Habbi Habbi is perfect for our littlest one, because it’s fun and play based, so it allows us to start language exposure early. For our older children, we use other tools that have a more full-fledged and formal ‘character learning system.’
Durable, with an emphasis on design and play: We love its toddler-proof design; they are hardcover, board books with easily wipe-down matte coating – clearly designed to be durable for heavy use and play. As mentioned, I love that the emphasis is on the kids having fun – so they learn through play. No matter where they tap, they hear something – whether it’s the phrase printed on the page, an expression from the character on the page, or a delightful musical tune. Also, in comparison to our other pens, the Habbi Habbi Reading Wand is brightly coloured and feels beautiful to hold. The compatible books are big, board books with vivid colours and large font bilingual English-Chinese text.
Intentional Content: The book content is markedly different from our other Reading Pens. Its illustrations show diverse characters and their content is very intentionally chosen. In their feelings book, they don’t just talk about being ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ but also say ‘I am worthy.’ In their family book, they highlight diverse family structures, including single-dad and adoptive families. In their mum book, they even re-named their ‘stay-at-home mom’ the “Chief Home Officer.”
Bilingual WITH pinyin: Something else very different to our other reading pen books is that each of the Habbi Habbi books are written in English AND Simplified Chinese character AND Pinyin. For my older children, I try to find monolingual Chinese materials – without English or Pinyin. But, for a young child, who isn’t reading in either language independently, I do like having the English there. It lets a monolingual parent (like myself) be more engaged in the bilingual language learning. The pen also speaks in dual languages, which can be a nice aid in letting the child learn the English words too (although there is an option to only make it read it one language). As for the pinyin, it’s helpful for me because I do know a little pinyin, which gives me some context around the phrases.
Plays Chinese AND English: It’s worth noting too that unlike our other pens, this one speaks both the Chinese first and the English. This is a deliberate design feature by Habbi Habbi to maximise Chinese exposure first, but also ensure that the books are accessible and understandable to more families. For example, families and children may know that 厨房 chú fáng is ‘kitchen’, but many may not know that 同理心 tóng lǐ xīn is ’empathy’. Having the English enables more new words to be learnt [Update : Habbi Habbi has new functionality enabled by their Mode Cards, so now families can choose either default Bilingual audio, Chinese-only audio or English-only audio. I love this since it allows for more native / heritage families to use Chinese only, while less-native families can use the Bilingual Mode. Interestingly the Habbi Habbi team told me that most families switch, depending on which books they are playing with, or whether a non-native family member might be playing and learning along with the child ….. cool idea!.]
Ultimately though, the beauty of the pen is its simplicity (eg there’s no apps to download, settings to get it working, etc), with a battery life that almost goes forever!
I’ve tried to draw an image of how I see the schema landscape of reading pens fitting together, and try to make it less overwhelming to understand all the options. Different pens are right for different family situations, learning stages, and intended outcomes. We have each of the pens listed in this table, so our family has good experience trialling them all.
Below is a comparison table of all the Chinese-English reading pens we have:
[Note: if you start off with only 5 Habbi Habi books, the price is SG$145 for Wand + 5 board books]
Habbi Habbi has different types of books, being: 1. Word books; 2. Phrase books (e.g. Emotions); 3. Sentence books (e.g. Kindness); and 4. Story books (coming soon!)
The Habbi Habbi Summer Set (which we were sent)
Other Habbi Habbi books (which we don’t have – but sound great!)
Currently the Habbi Habbi sets must be ordered via the Habbi Habbi website, and mailed from California. The mailing isn’t cheap. In Singapore, they retail through SavvyMama, but only the Chinese versions.
They also provide a discount for group orders, so if there are other families in Singapore who would like one, let me know as I’m trying to consolidate interest for a group order in the meantime (we would certainly love to keep adding books to our family’s collection too…!).
To see more information about the other Chinese reading pens our family has, do refer to my earlier posts. Different reading pens and curriculums suit different learning stages, ages, family situations, and intended learning outcomes.
I would love to hear from you, especially if you have the Habbi Habbi or experience with other similar pens too. It’s only through meeting other wonderful parents virtually, that this shared language journey becomes a more valuable one.
I was very kindly gifted the Habbi Habbi Reading Wand and books, but have not received any compensation for this review. It was a pleasure to review such a fun product.
With mid-Autumn festival coming up, we’ve been reading a few topical books about the moon and seasons.
This story of Full Moon 满月 (Mǎnyuè), probably isn’t what you think it will be, but it’s a touching read bringing up many modern issues about orphans, AIDS, adoption, death, and being grateful. It’s the only picture book I’ve seen which attempts to intertwine such heavy topics.
Author: 保冬妮
Country of original publication: China
Language: Simplified Chinese
Pages: 30
Lines per page: 6
Pinyin: No
Audio available: No
Available in NLB library: Yes
Recommended ages: 5 – 12 with a Chinese speaking adult. For context, my P2 daughter was unable to read this book independently, and the concepts contained would also benefit from adult guidance.
Beautiful illustrations with a poignant story make 满月 a memorable picture book. It might bring tears too – especially for the adult reader, so it’s worth being ready for. Whilst these are deep, and sadness is a constant theme through this book, the overarching message is about positivity, optimism and hope.
A little village girl in rural China is named 满月 (Full Moon), because she was born on the day of a full moon. There’s so much in her name – the girl’s parents pass away of a ‘blood disease’ whilst she is very young (which we find out in the afterword of the book is HIV/AIDS from a blood transfusion), and before passing away, 满月’s mother assures her that Mummy and Daddy will be back to visit when there is a full moon in the sky. Full Moon is her name, and also a symbol of her mother’s hope, and the seasons we go through from waxing and waning, to full again, and always looking forwards and needing to move.
The orphaned girl is cared for by an elder in the village, until a childless couple from the city adopt the child – on the day of a bright round full moon. She grows up happy and loved. However, 满月 still remembers her biological parents, and the kind grandfather who cared for her. One year, the adoptive family all visit the village to bring a box of mooncakes during Mid-Autumn Festival.
The book’s author, 保冬妮, is a professionally qualified psychological counsellor, and has been working in early childhood for nearly 3 decades, so I sense much of what is written comes from observations and deep understandings made over that period of work, which would be beyond the reach of most.
The book has won several Children’s Literature Awards in China, and is reportedly used by welfare organisations and counsellors to explain to children some of these heavy life concepts. This is unbelievably one of 200 books she has written! In an interview I read with 保冬妮, she states she is a determined writer who “believes that children’s literature builds the spirit of children” and that “reading is indispensable”. I wholeheartedly agree!
The illustrations are beautiful and expressive watercolour pieces, and accompany the story well. The text is short and poetic. It also doesn’t take too long to finish the story, meaning there is plenty of time for discussion afterwards (and during) without the reading session going forever.
The downside of this book is that for non-Chinese readers, it’s not as accessible as other books which we’ve enjoyed with Luka or Ximalaya audio. This one has no audio option, and the text was too challenging for my daughter to read alone. However, we read it together with a family friend who is a kindergarten Mandarin teacher, and the experience created a beautiful and memorable discussion over afternoon tea. She commented that the book has a beautiful maternal feel to it – and perhaps this is helped by having a female author.
The same author 保冬妮 has written several other festival-related books which look equally as exquisite and thought provoking – which we will remain on the lookout for opportunities to borrow from our local library and read.
This book was kindly given to us by My Story Treasury, and I’m so glad it’s now on our bookshelves. Thank you to My Story Treasury for recommending and blessing this book to us, after we asked for suggestions on good Mid-Autumn Festival books.
You can buy in Singapore from great children’s Chinese bookstores, including My Story Treasury . I’m excited to share that My Story Treasury has kindly extended a discount code to all readers of my blog. Use “lahlahbanana10” on check-out to receive 10% off any title that your purchase through their beautifully curated online store.
See my other reviews on Chinese Books for Pre-Schoolers or Chinese Books for Primary Schoolers.
Author: Toshio Iwai
Country of original publication: Japan
Language: Simplified Chinese
Pages per book: 32
Lines per page: 2 – 4
Books in the series: 3
Pinyin: no
Audio available: Luka compatible
Available in Singapore NLB: Yes
This is a very different kind of picture book. Imagine receiving a strange letter and a map, saying “Come to my home – I stay at the top of a 100 storey building!” – and then reading the book from back to front, with text going vertically….. maybe this sounds a little like Traditional Chinese book, but it’s a totally different concept going on here.
This is a stunningly illustrated and imaginative book set about three different houses which are 100 stories tall (or 100 stories underground, and 100 stories in the ocean). The original books are in Japanese: they haven’t been translated into English, but they have been translated into Simplified Chinese. With the bright colours, detailed illustrations and clever story-telling through vertically oriented text, the book has been lauded with numerous prizes in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It will be no surprise to a reader to learn that their author/illustrator, Toshio Iwai, is an acclaimed artist who has also created several successful commercial video games. The books do really feel like you’re in a video game brought to life!
We came across this book because my primary school-age daughter loves to read a set of English fiction books called The 13-Storey Tree House by Terry Denton and Andy Griffiths. These are wonderful novels, which in fact won the Australian Book Industry Award for Book of the Year for Older Children in . So, when I saw The House of 100 Storeys, I thought the set could be a fairly good alternative to this in Chinese. And it is – they have a similar style of content and masterfully creative storyline, but with more pictures than words, for a child who is perhaps less fluent with their Chinese reading than their English level.
I’ve written previously about a few book series which we’ve discovered in Simplified Chinese that are largely similar in style to English books my children already had been fascinated with. These include Young Scientists Magazine and Captain Underpants.
13-Storey Tree House certainly has a good equivalent in House of 100 Storeys (100层的房子).
In much the same way as 13-Story Tree House, the book takes the reader on an adventure level by level, with each page describing a new and very different layer of the house. The storyline is filled with suspense and is rich in details, covering topics from geography, geology, mathematics, biology and meteorology in a fun fashion. For example, there is a different set of animals on every tenth floor – a marvellously wonderful array of animals is described, from their habitats to their characteristics.
In the Undersea edition, it revolves around a young girl on board a cruise ship, who accidentally drops her doll into the ocean. As the reader searches for her lost doll, we end up on a magical journey exploring the depths of the ocean, in a rather unconventional and unexpected way.
I think the book content would be appropriate for children aged 5 to 12, however certainly the child needs to have a high level of fluency and concentration to understand these books. It really takes about 30 minutes to read the book from back-to-front. However, simply looking at the pictures is also a fun activity in itself. Sometimes my daughter will just stare through all the pictures, examining the small detail of the little animals eating, exercising, bathing, sleeping, etc. Other days, she’ll look at each page and try to guess who lives on the next floor.
Unfortunately, being a vertically oriented book, it’s very hard to do justice to it in photographs. You need to see the real thing! The details are exquisite.
Another blogger (@ The Multilingual Experiment) has made a lovely summary of the key themes / lessons / words which this book can be used for, grouped into animals, everyday objects, prepositions and verbs. Have a look if you’re keen to use this book as part of curriulum.
We have three books:
You can buy in Singapore from many great children’s Chinese bookstores. I made a blog post listing all our family’s favourite haunts to find excellent Chinese literature for Children in Singapore. The list includes some 10% discount codes for our favourite stores.
Specifically, we bought our 100 House set from My Story Treasury. I’m excited to share that My Story Treasury has also kindly extended a discount code to all readers of my blog. Please use “lahlahbanana10” on check-out to receive 10% off any title that your purchase through their store.
Yes, all three books can be read on Luka, in Chinese. If you haven’t heard of Luka yet, you really must! Luka Reading Robot is a clever – and super cute – robot which will read physical picture books aloud to your family. This adorable owl-shaped reading companion can read aloud over 50,000 Chinese books, which is great for families like ours where neither parent speaks Chinese.
I’ve made a long list of all the Luka Compatible books which we love in a separate post too.
f your family already enjoys this series, there are some other similar books which I would recommend trying out:
For more book recommendations, see my collection of earlier reviews:
UPDATE JUNE : VIP Peilian is no longer in business. This is one of the risks with online businesses which sprout up from China. It was great for us, but clearly the business wasn’t great. It’s a shame there are many great music teachers now who have lost their livelihoods and not been paid for months, and many families will have lost much in prepaid packages. There is however a lovely US-based service who has helped to re-employ some of these teachers. If you’re looking for online violin or piano classes taught in Mandarin Chinese, I would recommend you look at Bilin Academy.
[Below post is from , and sadly this business is no longer in business]
The concept is so simple – an online music education platform, offering to help your child practice their instrument, with a live teacher (based in China) who listens and provides encouragement, at a fraction of the price of the typical music lessons. That is the promise of VIP Peilian, and it has a smoothly executed app which enables booking of classes at 2 hours notice, and trained coaches to give real-time feedback, using a special lens for the iPad/tablet so the teacher can better see the instrument and fingering.
I’m especially fond of the concept of VIP Peilian because I’m always looking for more ways to increase the spoken Mandarin around our house, without taking formal Chinese tuition: learning piano from a mainland Chinese speaker certainly ticks many boxes for us!
VIP Peilian is aimed at children aged 5-16, already learning a musical instrument. It’s said to be the first service in China to provide “online one-on-one instrument training”. It’s certainly the only one we know of (based in China at least…. I do know of a few other online piano classes, but their costs are astronomical).
It really is a practice buddy, not a long-term substitute for real music lessons. The word “Peilian”, meaning training or sparring reflects this. The classes are intended to be a supplement to in-person learning (in that they will not develop a curriculum for you). In our experience, the VIP Peilian coach has focussed on teaching my daughter how to practice, and systematically goes through the songs which have been set by her real in-person teacher. During the ‘lock down’ which our city had for Covid, we did take a break from physical piano lessons, and relied merely on apps, but I’m glad we’re able to do the real thing once again too. There’s certainly no substitute for a physical teacher, but VIP Peilian is a nice way to ensure regular practice sessions are effective.
We do 3 x 25 minutes per week, and it feels just about right.
Piano, violin, viola, oboe, guitar, clarinet, saxophone, drums, ukulele, cello, flute, accordion, and guzheng, among 20 instruments offered. Interestingly, nothing for voice. We’ve only tried out the piano option (it’s been great), and we’ve heard varying reports about the effectiveness of other instruments.
Packages are sold in packages of 50, 80, or 120 “credits”.
If you take a standard teacher, 1 credit is 50 minutes. We do 25 minute lessons, so that’s 0.5 credits. Hence, the 80 credit package gives us 160 lessons, which need to be used up in the space of 18 months. The credits can be used across different children (in the one family) or across different instruments.
Note: if you choose a higher charging teacher, they may charge 1.2 units per 50 minutes or even up to 3 units for 50 minutes for a fancy teacher.
There is a free trial lesson (message me if you would like our referral code). After that, lessons must be done from a package and booked through the app. Yes it’s possible to pay in USD using Paypal, and there is also a myriad of options in RMB pricing through Alipay, Chinese credit cards, etc.
Online apps: For online practice we also purchased the Joy Tunes app, with Piano Maestro and Simply Piano. These are fun and being in English, we can make more use of the apps. They provided video lessons and an intuitive gamification function where it listens to the piano music being played, and gives a rating. We’ve used them for over a year now – however, I see this as more fun than learning support or practising. Unless the child has excellent concentration and ability to not give up, it’s easy for a child to become slack with these apps. Also, they miss the interpersonal connection!
Other online lessons: We’ve seen a couple advertised, such as Fireworks Music School based in London, but doing a heavy sell into Singapore. Fireworks Music School offers ”Online Live Music Lessons with London’s Best Music Professors” through Zoom. From the look of the website, the iPad needs to be placed beside the keyboard so as for the teacher to view the playing technique, so it might be a bit of a logistic exercise depending on the layout of your room (we certainly don’t have a bookshelf sideways next to our piano!). A good thing about this is that lessons are paid one-by-one (2 days beforehand via TransferWise), so there’s not the commitment risk which Peilian has. However, their rates are SG$45 for 30 minutes, of SG$70 for one hour… so it’s like five times the price of VIP Peilian. I know which one I’d choose!!
What great apps or techniques do you use to assist your children with their music practice? I’d love to know!
Meanwhile, if you are interested to try out VIP Pielian, and if they ask you for a referral code, I’m happy to share ours. Likewise, we signed up after a referral from a friend, and it was much appreciated.
If you’ve arrived at the end and are still looking for more classes, perhaps there are other posts on my blog which might help you go down some more rabbit holes to find the ideal class:
Name: Elephant and Piggie series in Chinese (Set of 17) 开心小猪和大象哥
Author: Mo Willems, 戴永翔 (translator)
Country of original publication: US
Language: Simplified Chinese
Pages per book: 57
Lines per page: 0-3
Books in the series: 17
Pinyin: No
Audio available: Luka compatible and plenty of Ximalaya readings
Available in SIngapore NLB libraries: Yes
This is one hilarious book set! Originally written in English, and translated into Chinese.
Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie series is a modern children’s classic, filled with hilarious storyline and plenty of simple, repetitive sentences overflowing with high frequency words. For us, it was love at first read. Every book in the series is ultimately about the everlasting friendship between Gerald the Elephant and Piggie the pig, and the humorous situations they find themselves in.
Gerald is a caring and careful elephant. Piggie is a joyful but not-so-careful pig. Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald often has a bad time. Gerald worries a lot, which means that Piggie does not have to. They are best friends.
Mo Willems is a New York Times #1 best-selling author and illustrator who started his career on Sesame Street, where he garnered six Emmy Awards for his writing. So he’s well positioned to be writing early childhood literature, which is based on sound educational pedagogy. Willems said his primary goal in writing the books was to create stories that were as funny and exciting as possible, despite their being early readers.
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In my opinion, Willems has captured everything an early reader book should be: simple words, short sentences, lots of repetition, clear illustrations with plenty of clues…. and no other distractions.
In terms of content, I would say they’re close to perfect: perfect length, perfect level of humour, and perfect depiction of the world and people within it. Having over 50+ pages for a kids book sounds long, but the pages are short and the time flies!
The Elephant and Piggie series in Chinese is best suited for ages 4 to 8, for children with basic Chinese listening fluency. The books are conversational, first-person style writing, with only a few words on each page, most of which are repeated several times.
Each book is a “mini drama” between the Elephant and Piggie, which are fun to read out and role play as a family (as an aside: there are some amazing free Ximalaya recordings of this book, done between a father and daughter which do just that!) Then, there are a range of supporting characters that make cameo appearances, like flies, snakes, rhinos, squirrels and that pigeon.
They’re pretty good for the whole family – my pre-schooler can read large parts of these books on her own, which cannot be said for many other book series (for example, even Mo Willem’s other famous book set 淘气小鸽子 The Pigeon, doesn’t provide the ease of reading which Elephant and Piggie does). Even just knowing ~300 Chinese characters (i.e. hasn’t finished Sage book series yet), it’s possible for her to read most of the 57-pages in these books, and feel a great sense of accomplishment in doing so. Meanwhile, the stories are entertaining enough that my 8 year old also requests these to be read on regular rotation. The stories are fun. And funny!
The entire Elephant and Piggie series is intertwined with the very subtle message that, despite all of their differences (species, personalities, genders, size), Gerald and Piggie can get along. I appreciate literature like that.
I see the personas of the two main protagonists reflected in my own children too – perhaps you might see it in your kids or their friends? The elder being a joyful child who overflows with enthusiasm and optimism, and occasionally gets over hyped. The second being the more cautious sister, who is practical, kind, gentle, and just a little anxious at times, although seemingly with wisdom beyond her years.
As an overall ‘feeling’, I don’t find the Elephant and Piggie books to be quite as charming as many of Mo Willems’ books which are oozing with joy (in this series, the drawings are simpler, the storylines are less bizarre). However, these books are deliberately very simple to read and give a nascent reader confidence, and in fact, they’ve been a great bridge for my eldest daughter to go on and read other more complex Mo Willems books (like Knuffle Bunny, or Leonardo The Terrible Monster).
We especially like:
As an example of the life lessons, picture this: Piggie finds a ball, only to have someone (aka “Big Guy”) come and take it away. This causes Gerald to want to get the ball back. However, along the way, Piggie learns that the “Big Guy” owns the ball and was just trying to play with her, not be mean – see what I mean about having a nice lesson hidden in the subtext?
Lessons aside, giggles will abound!
These books come in a set of 5 and a set of 17. Boy am I glad that I chose to buy the set of 17! My kids tore through this entire series so fast:
It’s worth noting that I have heard from others that they don’t feel the Elephant and Piggie series was translated particularly well from the English into Chinese. There have been several different translators for different versions, so maybe that makes a difference. In the 17-book which we purchased, it’s been translated by 戴永翔 . I think it’s been excellently written in such a way that it keeps the charm, but still preserves the essence of Mo Willems’ mission, which was to enable the books to be read and enjoyed by a nascent reader.
I’m aware that there is another 5-book set translated by 漪然 , which we haven’t read. Some desk-based research on the differences between the sets indicates that in our 17 book set, the name “Gerald” is translated phonetically into a Chinese name “杰拉” (jié lā ….. using two common characters 杰 jié = excellent and 拉 lā = pull). In contrast, the 5-book set translates “Gerald” into “小象“(xiǎo xiàng = little elephant). I’ve also heard from a friend in Taiwan that the traditional Chinese translation is totally different again!
Having not read the original English version, it’s hard to comment beyond that fact that we enjoy reading the Simplified Chinese version which we have, and we also enjoy listening to the English audio, which according to the children, it not that different from the Chinese.
You can borrow all these titles from the local libraries in Singapore (NLB), which lies excellent news!
We purchased our set in Singapore from the online Children’s Chinese bookstore called My Story Treasury . I’m excited to share that My Story Treasury has also kindly extended a discount code to all readers of my blog. Use “lahlahbanana10” on check-out to receive 10% off any title that you purchase through their store.
If outside of Singapore, other options to try could be Deziremi (UK), Jo Jo Learning (US), China Sprout (US) or Taobao or EZBuy (rest of Asia), with a search based on the story titles indicated above.
I’m sharing a helpful link which My Story Treasury introduced me to which has teaching resources (in English) about how to use Elephant & Piggie books in the classroom with extended activities. It has some interesting ideas, especially for value-based themes, but it also includes art, PE, creative writing and more for the classroom.
The whole 17 book set can be read on Luka, in both English and Chinese.
Luka reads all 17 books in Chinese, and also can read 8 books in this set in English (just tap Luka’s head twice to switch languages). We sometimes do a page in Chinese and then repeat it in English. The 8 books that Luka reads in both languages are:
吓你一跳！I Will Surprise My Friend!
第一次参加派对！I Am Invited To A Party
看我来扔球！Watch Me Throw The Ball
今天我要飞！ Today I Will Fly!
你头上有只鸟！ There Is A Bird On Your Head
大个子抢了我的球！A Big Guy Took My Ball!
开车去兜风！Let’s Go For A Drive!:
新朋友真有趣！My New Friend Is So Fun!
Actually, we don’t really need the Chinese audio, as my children can fully read most of these books, and they just fill in the gaps using Luka “point and read” mode. However, we do like to listen to the English audio (it has great sound effects and musical background), so usually I let the children read in Chinese and then we listen to Luka read in English, where its available.
Luka is a fantastic reading companion, which I’ve written about previously if you would like to find out more about this amazing little robot.
We recently finished the 14 Day Le Le Reading Challenge, and we have a plethora of beautiful new art and craft to show for it.
Le Le are a wonderful series of graded Chinese readers which aim to teach children how to read in Chinese, without using pinyin, and with interesting short stories which create a love for literature. If you’re unaware what the Le Le Chinese Character Learning 樂樂文化series is, see my review here.
The 14 Day Challenge was organised by Le Le Culture in July , to encourage daily book reading. We paired each book with a short craft activity, using items we already had in the cupboards, most of which were recycled. In fact, all the craft I’m about to share in this post only uses cardboard boxes, paper plates, toilet paper rolls, disposable cups, paperclips, yarn, rice, disposable chopsticks, feathers and food dye (and of course paint, glue, scissors, and craft knife).
We love Le Le because, well, it’s just so easy to craft to! The craft we do at home is usually very low preparation, low cost, so hopefully from these pictures you’ll see it’s easy for you to do the same. If there are any specific requests for more instructions on how we made it, let me know, and happy to put more detail in. I think most of it is so simply, it’s self explanatory.
The activities covered include themes for:
Day 1 – Watermelon (Le Le Red Book 47)
Paper plate and Ikea acrylic paint!
Day 2 – Singapore Map (Le Le Yellow Book 10)
Inspired by some other participants in The Challenge, I took out my craft knife from school days, and we made a puzzle of Singapore. Singapore had a General Election the day prior, so we made it to show the electoral regions and coloured by outcomes. It created some great conversations with kids about civics and democracy too.
Day 3 – Rainbow Rice Butterfly (Le Le Red Book 96)
We followed the Le Le book using food dye to blend the colour, and then added them into ziplock bags with rice and a spoonful of vinegar to make the rainbow rice. Thankfully no toilet paper shortage post-Circuit Breaker, and we had plenty to decorate the butterfly wings with.
Day 4 – Giant Feet & Footprints (Le Le Yellow Book 23)
Using cardboard boxes and egg carton toes, we made giant feet, and learnt the character “印” (as in foot print). We made the character in the bottom of the shoe using aluminium foil, and stamped around painting it on the ground. It was fun from start to toe! It was a great activity because it involved kids from 2 to 7 during their own unique piece, all had a part to play in the process.
Note if you’re attempting this one: the flatter cereal box was much easier for the children to walk in, rather than the fatter tissue box.
Day 5 – Clothing (Le Le Red Books 53, 98 and 100)
Initially we drew and coloured clothing. However, with National Day approaching, we then re-purposed the clothing to become washing poles (using chopsticks), which we decorated an HDB block with.
Day 6 – The Bird Hotel (Le Le Red Book 86)
We imagined the 15 birds in the tree were enjoying it as a hotel, and drew what it would be like to the birds in their tall tree.
Day 7 – A Talking Parrot (Le Le Red Book 52)
We read the book then drew our own scene, to encourage sentence writing (something we need a bit of help at!).
Day 8 – Sharing a Feather (Le Le Green Book 71)
Continuing the bird theme, we did feather craft about a peacock who shared their feathers with other birds, and they all became colourful. We used acryllic Ikea paint for the hand prints
Day 9 – Elephant with a curious trunk (Le Le Red Book 69)
Really simple… just use one paper plate, scissors and paint.
Day 10 – Monkey business (Le Le Red Book 15)
A super quick craft before Church using again using hand printing with Ikea acrylic paint.
Day 11 – Cherry trees and blossom (Le Le Red Book 78)
My 3 year old and I had a fun morning scrunching paper (good for fine motor skills!) and eating cherries!
Day 12 – Fishing for words (Le Le Red Book 49)
We arranged the characters from the Le Le Book 49 story on hanging paper clips to make a sentence.
Day 13 – Aquarium (Le Le Red Book 54)
Our fish theme continued today … making paper cup and plate fish. Our aquarium was a little too small!
Day 14 – Walking Water Rainbow (Le Le Yellow Book 70)
Last Day of the Challenge! Hooray! We tried a science experiment to create a “walking water” rainbow. And yes, there was a pot of gold (chocolate) at the end of the rainbow!
The Le Le 14 Day Challenge was a great opportunity to focus on literacy, and meet other like-minded Le Le reading families. Everyone shared really interesting ideas – including reading ideas. We learnt a lot about how we can read our Le Le sets (backwards, forwards, fast, slow, indoors, outdoors, etc). It was a fun 14 days!
We’ve also done some other fun Le Le craft outside of the Challenge, including:
Knitted dog clothes (Le Le Red Book 4) – using a ‘knitting nancy’ the dog was made ready for winter.
World Map (Yellow Book 69 & Red Book 83)– we converted our Singapore map into three layer puzzle, starting with a whole world map, then South East Asia, and finally Singapore underneath.
Snowflakes (Red Book 1 and 19) – more toilet paper craft & paper cutting
Coloured Elephants (Red Book 15) – using old milk bottles and crepe paper
Planets (Red Book 100) – we studied outer space in a few different forms, including using PVA glue with food colouring to make planets which we could stick on the window. We also drew our own solar system to scale on recycled cardboard.
Food Truck (Red 72) – a watercolour and pencil sketch
Robots (Red Book 5) – not much literacy in this one, but it was fun to build a large robot using magnetic squares.
Origami (Yellow Book 31) – Dog & Cranes, simply following the instructions in the book.
Cardboard Colour Puzzles (Red Book 100) – for colour blending and fine motor skills. This was actually a piece of work fully designed and executed by the big sister, for her littlest sister.
See how easy peasy it is? What fun craft have you done related to Le Le? I would love to know!
And pssssst, let me tell you a secret. One of the rewards for finishing the Le Le 14 Day Reading Challenge is a free online art class from Language Art Fun, and it’s well worth it. Below are some pictures from our Zoom classes we’ve done as prizes for completing the challenge.
Have you considered any CCAs (aka co-curricular or extracurricular activities…) which are taught in Mandarin Chinese, to give your children more language exposure? This can be a much cheaper alternative to formal Chinese tuition, and it might be a lot more fun for the child too.
We’ve never in our house faced an “I-hate-Mandarin” attitude (touch wood), but I like to think that predominantly my kids only use the language for activities which they feel are fun, and not pressurised or stressful. We’ve opted for taking classes like piano, cooking or sport with Mandarin coaches to let them absorb the language in every day situations outside of the formal school classroom. There’s a lovely post by Hands on Fun Chinese, which is an ‘Immersion Parent Guide to Supporting Chinese‘, and it recommends extracurricular activities as a top strategy, and I agree it’s powerful (and fun).
Our family has engaged in several great Chinese taught non-academic classes over the years we have lived in Singapore – and now in a post-COVID world, we’ve even had the opportunity to explore some special online classes too which are offered globally. Here’s a hit list of a few ideas to get your creative juices going.
In Singapore: again, the local Community Club’s often have classes in Chinese Calligraphy for children, which are taught fully in Chinese. Check out OnePA for course listings and locations. Another great option which my elder daughter has done is Hokkien Huay Kuan Arts and Cultural Troupe, who have recently branched out into offering Calligraphy
& Chinese Painting classes too, in addition to the amazing suite of drama classes.
Another one to consider (which we haven’t tried) is Moyuan Culture Education Centre which offers Chinese Calligraphy, Chinese Painting and Creative Art classes.
Online: Bilin Academy is our go-to option here, as they have a wide range of online art classes taught solely in Mandarin. Whilst it’s a US-based service, they have plenty of classes available for Singapore timezones. Topics range from learning about fashion design from top New York Fashion Designers (who speak fluent Mandarin), through to drawing Disney Princesses, or doing a watercolour class on painting Classical Chinese poetry. Classes are affordable at ~US$15-20 per hour, with max 5 students in a class. We have enjoyed every course we’ve done through Bilin Academy, and hope to do many more.
Another great option we’ve enjoyed online is Language Art Fun, which is more suitable for kindergarten age children, as it a similar price to Bilin Academy. The focus is more on crafts and simpler drawing, which always includes a literary element too.
In Singapore: Singapore Chinese Dance Theatre offers ballet and contemporary dance classes for children of all ages, taught in Mandarin. Don’t be fooled by their website address – whilst this is also hosted at the Hokkien Huay Kuan Association building, it’s totally separate from the Hokkien Huay Kuan Arts and Cultural Troupe, and their waiting list isn’t quite as long (thankfully!). Classes include western ballet, but also Wushi, Chinese Classical Dance and Chinese Ethnic Dance. At the end of each year, students have the opportunity to perform in the Theatre’s annual dance showcase, which for many (parents included) is the highlight of the year!
Online: Chiwawa Fun have online classes for hip hop and tap dance. They have ongoing classes, and if you don’t see one advertised which fits your schedule, ask them to start one. They’re based in Hong Kong, so it’s a great fit timezone wise for families Singapore. We know one family who even thought about having a hip hop class as a birthday party event, it’s that fun! Lots of choreography to develop your child’s dance abilities, all the while learning Mandarin. Lah Lah Banana readers can benefit from a 10% promo discount at checkout using LAHLAHBCHIWW10.
In Singapore: It took us 1 year on a waiting list to finally get a slot at SingaporeHokkien Huay Kuan Arts and Cultural Troupe! Their weekly enrichment classes focus on speech and drama, and also broadcasting courses for older children, and it’s not an overstatement to say they’re wildly popular. For children who are particularly keen and talented, there is an opportunity to join their Cultural Troupe for live performances at various venues.
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) also offer a Bilingual Chinese Drama Class, which again is usually oversubscribed. We haven’t tried this one, but we’ve heard it’s also good.
Online: We did a Speech and Drama class through Bilin Academy which was excellent. Bilin is a small school based in US, and they really vet their teachers and providers well, so you can be sure to be paying for quality whatever you take through them. This is also where we’ve taken several terms of art classes, which have been beautiful.
In Singapore: most of the local Community Clubs have Chinese Children’s Orchestra and Choirs, many of which are free to sign up to, provided the child has an existing musical background (eg if they can already read music or play another instrument, then they may be able to learn some of the Chinese instruments like Guzheng 古箏 or Erhu 二胡). Enquire at your local Community Club, or look online at OnePA . Note that often not all the options are listed online, so you are better to talk to the Club / Centre in person. One great thing about these groups is that they often have multiple performance opportunities at local community events, such as Chinese New Year dinners, or Hawker Centre openings, etc.
For more specific musical instruments with one-to-one classes, consider websites like the Happy Pianist or Piano Hub, which match students with private tutors. You can input as one of your requirements that the tutor speaks predominantly in Mandarin. We found two great tutors through there.
Online: we use VIP Pielian for online practice sessions bi-weekly for my daughters to support their regular piano classes. It’s an intriguing service based in mainland China, and good way for a child to clock up the practice, whilst chatting in Chinese. I’ve done a more detailed post about how VIP Pielian service works. Classes are about US$6 per 30 minutes, for one-to-one classes, and multiple instruments are offered.
In Singapore: We found out about gymnastics in Chinese by accident! SGActive provides cost competitive Gymnastics classes (for both girls and boys, which is rare and great!) at the Bishan Sports Hall, which coincidentally was run by mainland Chinese speaking coaches. Since then, we’ve discovered that many other ActiveSG courses (such as basketball, athletics) run island wide have Chinese-speaking coaches. You might even be able to find a private one-on-one swimming classes with Chinese coaches, etc.
If gymnastics is your thing, we’ve also heard that at The Junior Gymnastics Training Centre there are also Chinese speaking coaches for gymnastics and wushu, which could be another good alternative for those living around Bukit Timah.
Online: Without doubt, coding classes in Mandarin have been our favourite of all online classes. It’s just a class type which lends itself so naturally to doing it via the screen, especially since computers needs to be involved anyway. Chiwawa, in collaboration with First Code Academy, offer classes in Scratch, Roblox, and Minecraft from beginner through to intermediate. Last school holidays, we arranged a class daily for my daughter every morning, and it was incredible to see the progress she made.
Chiwawa have ongoing classes, otherwise all it takes is 3 students for them to start a new class (max class size is 4 students). Lah Lah Banana readers can benefit from a 10% promo discount at checkout using LAHLAHBCHIWW10. There’s also a free class for your first time trial.
In Singapore: There are so many children’s chess groups in Singapore, for both Western/European Chess, and Chinese Chess (Xiangqi / Weiqi) options. Did you even know there was a difference in rules between European and Chinese chess?
For Western Chess, whilst they’re not explicitly touted as ‘Mandarin speaking’ groups, from our experience, most of the children in the chess clubs are CHinese, and moreover, they’re from Chinese speaking homes. The main Singapore Chess Federation is based at Bishan, and they have weekly classes/competitions and also intensive holiday camps; there are plenty of small teams and academies across the island.
For Chinese chess, Xiangqi Mind Train Academy is a good option (update: Jan I heard they have stopped with Covid), and classes are conducted explicitly in Chinese and are available either in group settings or private lessons. A lot of the Community Centres and Community Clubs also have groups, so be on the look-out, and you might be surprised and what exists nearby to you.
Online: Again, Bilin Academy have classes in Go! and Weiqi. Well priced for both individual and group classes.
Online: Online classes in China have seen exponential growth in recent years, and math classes have been a key area of this. Hence there are at least six providers of math classes taught in Chinese, and we’ve done trials with most of these. Some follow Mainland Chinese Math, others follow Singapore Math syllabus, and others still follow Math Olympiad or other problem solving methods. We found one particular problem solving course (eg Suduko, Rubiks Cube, other puzzles) we enjoy called Pea Math, which has 2 x 45 minutes of lessons per week in a group of 4. It’s been excellent. Initially, when we signed up, I thought the primary intention of the course would assist with speaking /listening skills in Mandarin in a different setting (which is does) but there has also been a lot of reading too, which is a real bonus. For more details, see my post where I compare six different online math class options.
Yes, there are lots of ‘one off’ classes around the place if you keep your eyes peeled, which focus on conversational Mandarin for children. One helpful source is a Facebook group called ‘Classes for Kids in Chinese and Spanish‘, where group members share their favourite classes.
Honestly, Outshool is a mixed bag, but you can see the parents reviews and all the classes are about US$10/hour, and you will find some gems. Our particular favourites have been a series of classes through Outschool about Pokemon, where a Pokemon theme is used throughout to discuss various concepts from colours and numbers, through to more advanced levels with idioms and shopping lists. Outschool offers $20 free credit for first time users (no strings attached!) which is usually enough for 2 Chinese classes. Riley Lu is a great teacher to look out for.
There’s also an amazing Outschool science class in Mandarin by Jill Laoshi.
Here’s a referral link to get the credit (for full transparency, this also gives me US$20 credit ….. so if you have friends already using the service, do ask them for their codes, as you’ll be doing them a favour using it).
This isn’t really a class, but I’m just adding add this onto the list, in case others out there also attend a church which has both English and Chinese congregations. We had been attending English service regularly for years at a particular church, when one day we accidentally arrive a little earlier to discover an amazing Sunday School led fully in Mandarin. We’ve been attending church early ever since then!
In Singapore: We’ve been part of several different “book club” circles with friends, either in person or more recently online, where the children have all read a similar book (or series of books like Le Le Chinese) and then met weekly to take it in turns reading, and playing games / answering questions related to the books. These have always been fun, but really require the dedication of a parent (or teacher) who can fluently speak the language and passionately share it with the children. It’s certainly an interesting option if you can find a great person to lead it!
Online: We’ve done a series of Chinse debate online classes through Bilin Academy – they have classes for intermediate and beginners, including lower primary. They feature a new topic in each class and assist the child to construct their thinking framework. I feel it’s a super way for a child to learn about public speaking and argument formation, and doing classes in Chinese is much cheaper than the equivalent English alternatives!
There’s another online debating option that we haven’t tried which is for upper primary school and secondary children that looks interesting looking called Children’s debating group in the US run by the inspirational bilingual blogger Oliver Tu.
Another really fun idea is holiday camps in Chinese during the School holidays – where kids go on excursions, cook, do sports and play games and generally have loads of fun, fully in Chinese. There are usually so many to choose from! I’m really hoping that the virus situation will improve enough to make Summer and Winter Camps (ironic words I know given it’s in Singapore where there’s only one season!) an option for our family again soon.
If you’ve come here hoping to find more conventional or conversational Chinese class options online, we’ve also done this through the COVID lockdown, and I’ve compared a few options for online Chinese classes for children at in earlier post here.
For those not in Singapore, look at this list by Betty Choi of CHALK Academy of other non-academic classes for children online and in USA.
I’m always looking for more way to slip fun Chinese into our day-to-day routines! What classes have your family tried and enjoyed?
By the way, if you got to the end of this post and are still reading, perhaps you might be interested in some other posts I have written about learning Chinese, such as:
Teaching a child to read Chinese is not an impossible to task, but it requires concerted effort, and if don’t speak the language (which I don’t) then you’ll need to leverage lots of external resources to aid the journey. This post is to offer suggestions, and things which I wish someone had shared earlier with us. I am not a trained language teacher – only a parent trying hard – so it’s not exhaustive by any means, and there are many great ways for teaching a child to read Chinese. They key thing is that you give it a try if you need to!
Reading is SO SO very important on the journey to becoming bilingual in Chinese, even if your ultimate aim for your child is only to speak the language fluently. I have another post about ho2 extensive reading has been key to learning Chinese.
My eldest child was able to read ~ characters at about ~8 years of age, which is nothing impressive for a Chinese heritage family, but to me was quite a milestone, as we started on the reading journey quite late, and achieved most of this within about a 2.5 year period since starting school, most of which the school wad closed due to COVID. It was quite a effort on all fronts at home. After this experience with my eldest, I started much earlier to teach my young children to read in Chinese (when they were aged 2 and 4 respectively), and in fact, Chinese was the first language which they could read. A year later, it is still their strongest language to read in.
As parents, we can neither speak nor read Chinese, so this post it to encourage you and say it is possible to actively help your children despite your situation. Obviously all children are different, with different interests and aptitudes. Mine are great readers, which helps. By systematically and deliberately putting small doses of Chinese reading into our daily routines, we’ve made the language acquisition happen little-by-little. It’s certainly a marathon not a sprint, and involves some journey pre-planning too.
I saw an Instagram tag #mandarinagainstallodds by one my favourite bookstores in Singapore, and I thought, yep that’s us. It could be you too. Even though as parents we cannot speak Chinese, we realised that to go to primary school in Singapore, it would be essential for our children to learn the language, and it’s a good life skill to have. So we made it happen. And yes, we are absolutely proud of the achievement.
That’s partially why I started this blog, as a resource to show it is possible (note, I didn’t say easy) to raise happy, bilingual children as monolingual parents. More importantly, I wanted to support others in their magnanimous language journeys. There are surprisingly lots of parents doing similar things to us, and it can be your story too. Our family isn’t amazing; far from it. But there are amazing resources out there to help you.
Both my husband and I grew up in countries where learning a second language is not emphasised, and our parents only spoke English to us. My husband is an avid foodie, and impressively as an adult he has managed to self-learn French and conversational Bahasa, but Chinese has alluded him. My husband, being ethnically Chinese, has coped with so many “Ah, how come you don’t speak Mandarin, mah?” questions that he’s totally avoided entering Chinatown for the last decade. In Singapore, where all ethnically Chinese people must learn their mother tongue at school without exception, it’s somewhat of an absurd novelty, especially to the older generation, that a Chinese person may exist who cannot understand even a teeny-weeny bit of the language (although usually his next move is to respond to them in Bahasa and watch their eyes bulge! It work especially well at the hawker centre, as usually the Malay stall owners next door have a huge belly laugh too).
When we moved to Singapore, in hindsight I wish I’d gotten my act together and started to learn one of the official languages here: 15 years later and I still don’t even know enough to confidently share a greeting or nicety. It’s not without trying though – I once tried wishing Happy New Year a to a highly auspicious auntie, and got my “Gōng Xǐ Fā Cái” mixed up with my and “Gung Hei Fatt Choy” and it rolled off my tongue fluently as something like “Gung Hei Xi Fatt” ….. which was wishing the the dear old lady a prosperous time in the bathroom over the coming year. She didn’t see the funny side, alas.
I remember applying to MBA school, and feeling frustrated that the particular school I was most interested in required applicants to speak not only a second language, but a third as well! I promised myself that I would try to give my children this opportunity to properly learn a language if we could. With three children born in Asia, at least something was on our side!
The initial pipe dream that I had for the children was to employ a Chinese nanny ….. seven years later I still have no clue how to go about that, but I want to show you that just because you don’t speak the language nor have any other Chinese speaker available in the house, it shouldn’t stop you from supporting bilingual language learning, especially if you’re living in a country which is conducive to it.
I’m not a tiger mum, and we’re not a tiger family. My kids have simple (and what I hope are happy) lifestyles – they play outdoors, they get messy, they laugh. This in itself appears to be a rarity in Singapore. Many kids join tuition centres for multiple subjects between ages 3 – 4, and by primary school, mums and maids often have a full-time programme chauffeuring their kids between 2 to 3 enrichment classes each evening, and perhaps 5 classes on a weekend…… nope, that’s not us. Gosh it’s exhausting just to type about it. I have a push bike with three kids’ seats attached to it – we ride it to school, we ride it to the park and the library. They kids are in their pajamas before 8pm, which is about the time their friends are often starting up a tuition class! Alas, I diverge.
My kids aren’t geniuses either. Their Chinese language skills are nothing extraordinary, relative to other children. However, they do love the language, and all three are able to keep up with local Singaporean peers, which for me, is extraordinary enough.
I see a lot of chatter in the primary school class groups (from Chinese mother-tongue families) commenting “tingxie (spelling list) this week is too hard” etc. Well, I wouldn’t know because I have nothing to compare it to myself – but I do know my elder child has never mentioned it being a challenge, which I’m glad about, because I don’t want language learning to become a chore. She knows she needs to put in effort, and she sees that I’m right beside her putting in effort too (entering the spelling lists into Skritter app, chopping up homemade flash cards, using Google translate to work out how to order books from Taobao, listening to audio stories on Luka, etc). Together we make progress and celebrate. I would make an observation that rote learning characters is dead boring – it’s much better to teach a child to read Chinese using real literature.
In the middle of my daughter’s first year of primary school (P1), I realised that we needed to change the way she was learning Chinese. It couldn’t just be confined to one passive hour a day in the classroom.
I knew her marks in Chinese had never been great, and I’d turned a blind eye to it, thinking “as long as she’s happy and learning something, then I’m happy”. But the epiphany came when, I found some of her old Chinese worksheets from her kindergarten days, and asked her to read it. She couldn’t – and we were both dumbfounded. I resolved to change this. You can read my earlier post here on the background of why this occurred. Let’s just say, the local primary school environment in Singapore has great curriculum and book learning, but an hour a day of Chinese means the learning cannot be left only for the school classroom. So unless both speaking and reading (and ultimately writing too) is reinforced outside of the classroom, it’s a tough battle.
The main change which followed was my mindset. I needed to go from being a backseat passenger, to being highly embedded and engaged in the language journey. I realised I needed to be more than just my daughter’s support crew and cheerleader, but to be actively mapping the lay of the land, and reinforcing her understanding of what we were seeing, and where we were going. We need to bring Chinese into our home lives too. And that’s when I really started teaching all my children to read in Chinese.
Everyone is at a different place, with different needs. For us, as a non-Chinese speaking family, the way this played out was that we decided to:
Small changes; big difference. Think about it, by doing the first three activities, you sneak in an extra 20+ minutes of (fun & free) Chinese each day, and across a week that’s well over 2 hours of additional Chinese exposure.
It’s also changed the way the kids think – we’ve shown them now that we’re making consistent and deliberate time for Chinese, and space on our bookshelves for it too. This demonstrates to them we’re serious about it, and it’s one of our priorities. We’ve been really regular at having this feature in our evening routine – we sometimes forget to use our points chart, and have been known to forget bedtime prayers, but I don’t think in the past year that we’ve ever forgotten to do our Chinese reading!
First thing to note, before teaching your child to read Chinese, your child must really grasp basic spoken Mandarin. Is this isn’t your family, check out a different post about how monolingual families can start the language journey. If your children they do already understand basic spoken Chinese instructions and are ready to read, there are some really great tools out there. There are also some great communities too. The one thing I wouldn’t bother doing is attempting to speak/learn Chinese myself, as that wouldn’t be conducive learning.
My logic has always been that as I cannot speak the language, I need to leverage on the best tools which exist. I have spent (and continue to spend!) a lot of time researching how and what to buy, and I’m very confident that what we have landed with are an excellent collection, which provide a systematic approach to learning characters, supporting the school syllabus, and embedding a love of the language through literacy. Although, learning and innovation never stops, so I’m always keen to hear new suggestions if you have any!
I’ve mentioned these above, but I’ll expand here. The Chinese literacy games like iHuman and Wukong Literacy (both reviewed here) are perfect for a child who understand Chinese, even if ther parent doesn’t not – what’s more, they’re super fun. The character writing is Skritter (my review is here) and whilst it’s not fun, it is a way that a parent can upload all the tingxie words for a child to learn independently. I have no affiliation to any of these apps or companies, and no referral / discounts either, but I’m sharing because they really are excellent for families in our situation. That said, for Skritter, there is generally a massive group buy for families in Singapore annually, where price is reduced from US$12/month, to US$12 per YEAR. If interested in this, join the FB group Ni Hao SG Primary School Learning, and join the conversations.
The Luka Reading Companion (reviewed here) is what we use to read the Chinese picture books, and the books we’ve found most useful to start out with the children are Sage 500 Books (reviewed here) and Le Le Chinese Reading System (reviewed here). Again, no affiliation, but I can say that for Luka, Sage and Le Le there are amazing online communities of other parents using these resources, and sharing how they use them (mainly through FB groups), and for that, I’m forever grateful. Also, each of the distributors of these products have good support for their customers, including free printables, crafts and other online resources to aid families.
If your child has graduated beyond simple Chinese readers, then Chinese bridging books combined with an optical reading pen make is possible for a child to read independently. The Youdao Dictionary pen (reviewed here) or the very similar iFlytek Alpha Egg (reviewed here) have been other great tools for my eldest daughter to translate harder Chinese characters in the novels she now reads, and lets her confidently understand a book, despite perhaps only knowing 85% of the characters contained.
I have actually written some other blog posts which might be helpful if you’re reading this as a parent who cannot speak the language and wondering what might work for you:
I’ve learnt a lot through supportive online communities like the Face Book Group Ni Hao Sg Primary School Learning, and other bloggers like GrowingHearts123 and Guavarama Finally, there are tonnes of interesting bilingual Instagramming families to live vicariously through if you’re on Instagram (if you’re looking for starting points try @blackgoldfish, @dailymusingofj, @thedreamwhale, @jaslearningwithkids or @ourjoyoflearning, or even my own humble account @lahlahbanana).
I would love to hear how what is working (or not working) for your family too, as life is always easier when it’s shared with like-minded folk. Please drop a comment or reach out if you have further questions or things to teach me!
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