Motherly Notes Methods – Nurture Love Educate

Age: 3+ with parent 6+ Independent

Where to purchase or for more information:

羅北兒故事集 – Arnold Lobel Collection Whole Set

1. 大巨人約翰 – The Big Giant

2. 明鑼移山 Ming Lo Moves the Mountain

3. 露西兒- Lucille

4. 小豬離家記 – Small Pig

5. 老鼠爸爸說故事 Mouse Tales

6. 貓頭鷹在家 Owl At Home

7. 老鼠湯 – Mouse Soup

8. 蚱蜢旅遊記  Grasshopper on the Road

9. 大象舅舅 Uncle Elephant

This is a set of translated books by Arnold Lobel. Books are popular in the states as they are in Asia I believe. Stories are healthy, cute, easy to read. This is a great bridge book for the beginner with simple words and a few lines on a page and you can think of it as just longer picture books.

Phrases are easy to understand since it’s translated so not many idioms are used. It could be understood if you read it to a 3 year old and for independent reading, children who knows zhuyin (phonetic assistance) or those with about 800+ characters under their belt would be able to read it without with easy understanding of the stories.

These are classic stories that we’ve actually read before in English and I was happy to buy the set in Chinese because the words were easy to read. They left enough spacing in between the words for kids not to be overwhelmed. They didn’t do wordy translations either and the flow is quite good.

The title that I read in the video is called Small Pig. It’s about a happy pig who loved to roll in his mud until one day the farmer’s wife decided to “clean” the house and farm where she cleaned up all the nice mud the pig had. Angry at the situation, the pig ran away from home in efforts to find a new dirty muddy home. The first place he visited ended up to be some other bugs and animal’s homes and he was kicked out. The second place was a garbage dump and although dirty, there was no mud to sink in. The third place was the city where the pig mistakenly sank into some cement thinking it was mud. The Farmer and wife drives around looking for the pig only to find him stuck in some cement. They call the police and firemen and rescues the pig.

On their way home, it rained hard and when they got home, they found that new mud had developed from the rain and the farmer’s wife vowed never to clean up the mud again. The pig was happy.

This is a good set of starting bridge books and I find the drawings and stories all to be very charming. I am missing the first book but that’s okay. The second book where Ming Lo Moves a Mountain has more words on a page. Other than that, the other books all have pretty easy to the eye picture to text ratios.