I did not see this 2003 book when it was new. There may be no picture book on Chinese characters that I like, but this may be the best I've seen. I wished that the characters were also printed as I went through the story. . . then I got to the activities and I wished it even more! The activities have little do to with Chinese. I wonder if they were something that the editors required her to add afterwards.
I really think that it should be mentioned that only 3-4% of current Chinese script are ideographs/pictographs, if you include associative compounds (like that many trees make s forest) it might go up to 16%. I think in this context, it is at least as important as saying, "Pictures are at the root of all writing." Perhaps saying something like, "Each character is a picture and there is no alphabet.", would be better?
There may be no picture book on Chinese characters that I like. This may be the best I've seen -- but the activities have little do to with Chinese. I wonder if they were something that the editors required her to add afterwards.
- The 3rd activity "Make Up Your Own Symbols" makes the most sense to me.
- Suggesting that children create an alphabet by drawing "ant" for A and "bear" for B is a reasonable activity for the audience but has no relationship to Chinese.
- Pretending that the script/calligraphy could be copied and then that memorizing it would have significant worth is ... interesting. It would not necessarily help them recognize the way anyone else writes the character.
- "Flashlight Picture Magic" could be fun but I don't see the letter or Chinese tie-in. In fact, it might be confusing since paper the symbols are written on has to be taped up-side-down (writing toward the light) to be displayed properly -- and that is not mentioned. Even with English (roman characters), I can only think of 10 letters of the English alphabet that have left-right symmetry (AHIMOTUVWX ilovwx). It might not be as big as issue with 6 to 7 of the 29 characters given in the book.
No Chinese characters flip symmetrically. None of the basic brush strokes that make up the characters are symmetrical. You are supposed to see where the brush is pressed and lifted from the paper.
With printed Chinese characters, instead of hand-written, then maybe a handful of characters have an access of symmetry. This depends on the font of course! Many of these are from the simpler characters and the same in traditional and simplified Chinese. If you must have some, check these in the font you are using:
| yi 一(one) | er 二(two) | san 三(three) |
| shi 十ten | kou 口 (mouth) | ri 日 (sun, day) |
| mù 木 (tree, wood) | mu (eye) | 音 |
| zhong 中 (middle) | shan山 (mountain) | wei (outsider) |
| liu 六 (six) | liang (both) |
In some fonts, even ren 人 (human), 來 lái (come), 圖 (picture), huang 黃 (yellow) and yang (sheep) might be symmetrical. However, please tell your audience that these are unique and not representative. These are how many - out of the 3,000 are needed to read a newspaper, and the over 85,o00 characters in the language?
Simplified Chinese may have a few more symmetrical characters, like: 士.
