Book Review: Odonata Reading Together Series
Adorable starter stories for a range of ages
Contents:
What is Odonata and what is their Reading Together series?
Odonata Books is a Malaysian publishing company based in Kuala Lumpur that publishes Chinese books for a wide demographic ranging from 0-18 years! Worldwide, they’re most popular for their graded learning series but they also have some excellent story books for young children who are starting to read and write Chinese.
This particular series is the Reading Together series that consists of 2 sets of 5 books. The first set are aimed at ages 0-4 years and the second set are aimed at ages 5 years.
Don’t be put off by the age ranges - you need to consider your own situation and language level. The given ranges take various factors into consideration, most notably assuming that the child was exposed to Chinese from a very early age in a majority Chinese environment. So the difficulty of these are more around pre-school, beginner level.
Furthermore, while these sets are separated into age groups (or difficulty levels, if you like) they are not classified as graded learning systems. Graded learning systems are designed to increase vocabulary in incremental stages, whereas each book in this series can be considered a standalone story.
Reading with children
When it comes to reading these with children, the first set is delightfully easy. They’re perfect for families who aren’t hugely comfortable with reading Chinese because of the repetition, easier vocabulary and simple plot lines. The second set gets a little harder, particularly because of there are more lengthy paragraphs with less repetition and more intermediate-level vocabulary. But the difficulty jump isn’t too bad. (You’ll probably find that children progress onto this next difficulty quite naturally!)
The stories themselves are nothing to be sniffed at; all of them are endearing short stories that are designed to be memorable. Each story has something useful to teach children, although some stories are arguably more useful than others (depending on your point of view, of course). For instance, one of the books from the first set is about some animals jumping into the water while another book from the same set is about counting the number of wheels on cars. Other themes in the first set include: playing with other children, growing vegetables, and a clumsy duckling.
The second set is nice, too. With themes more focused on home, creativity and emotional intelligence: a watermelon boat, painting, cleaning up, going home, and getting upset.
Tips, artwork and engagement
The core idea behind the Reading Together series is quite obvious: reading together. The book itself comes with tips at the beginning for how to maximise the series’ potential. It’s all in Chinese, though, so here’s a summary of what they suggest:
Read the story. When reading the story, try to be animated and engaged!
Engage with the questions and activities suggested at the end of the book.
Talk and discuss it in their everyday life and make activities of your own!
Encourage them to retell the story.
Every book comes with several pages of activities and/or questions at the back. Handy!
As mentioned above, the books already come with activities and questions for discussion at the end, but it doesn’t stop you from making your own activities and discussing it daily without the book! For instance, we let Rui husk out a watermelon boat herself just like the little mouse’s - an activity which she loved.
The cartoon art work is bright and colourful. The characters’ expressions are also clear to read and easy to discuss. Simple things like a kangaroo’s posture showing its curiosity to a rabbit crying all help make this engaging material.
Other thoughts
A first glance at the books will show you that there isn’t any Pinyin included (except for a few difficult characters). This may be problematic for parents who can’t read Chinese confidently, or if you children are used to reading with Pinyin. But, we’ve found that reading without Pinyin encourages children to recognise the characters and pries them off depending on Pinyin too much. It’s just a personal preference, though, so the decision is yours!
This radish house from the first set is definitely beautiful, but certainly not real.
Finally, I’ll note here that both the first and second sets feature more anthropomorphic characters (animals characterised like humans). Some of the stories are a little surreal (for example, one about someone growing a giant radish which he turns into a new home). Granted, not all books in the set are like this. But if realism is a concern for you - maybe steer clear of these, or check before you buy. (We’ve got descriptions of the books in the set on our product page.)
Conclusion
If in doubt, this series is a nice place to start because they feature 10 unique stories - all of which are designed to encourage and engage parent and child reading together! Some may have issues with the lack of true realism, but others may love this. There’s also the lack of Pinyin, which may or may not be a problem. The artwork is joyful and bright and the illustrators have made the effort to create drawings that engage children intellectually and emotionally. Overall, these books are a delight to read with children.
Interested in this series? You can purchase the series or individual sets here!
Have you heard of Odonata before? Do you like this series - why/why not? We’d love to hear from you, so just drop us a comment!
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