Book Review: My Bilingual Book of Nursery Rhymes
Learn to sing, sing to learn!
Contents
Disclaimer: This review was not requested by the author. It’s written on our own volition.
Who's Yvonne Tee?
“I truly believe that each child has the innate ability to learn languages and be bilingual, or even multilingual! We just need to create a language-rich environment for them.”
- Yvonne Tee, 2020
Yvonne is one of those ladies with multiple talents. She is mother to two, speaks three languages and two dialects, dances, created an awesome Instagram platform, and now she’s adding writing to the mix! Growing up in Malaysia, she’s found multilingualism to be an asset and a blessing - something she has ‘always wanted to pass down to [her] children’. Passionate about language and learning, she noticed a need for more bilingual with pinyin books for children!
You can read all about the ‘fateful night’ Bilingual Kiddos was conceived and born into the world here. It’s a great and inspiring little story!
Reading together, learning together
That perfect triple combo
The main feature of this book is arguably the triple paralleled text using English, Simplified Chinese and Pinyin! So you’ll get pages looking like this which is simply awesome. While some parents might not like having children rely on Pinyin, I personally love having the option to read it. It makes it so much easier! The bilingual text also makes this a perfect fit for the Chinese-English bilingual household!
Did you say free stuff?
Oh, yes! When you purchase a single book, you can get a free audio guide! (You can also find other super cute and useful free resources on her site, so don’t forget to check those out.)
It’s so great that Yvonne has made a free audio guide available with her book because it’s a helpful way to engage with the book for those who aren’t native speakers. You can get the song guide and the pronunciation guide.
While you can definitely tell they’re homemade (we’d love to have seen each song get it’s own audio file, for example), they’re made with the love and attention of a mum who knows what it’s like to raise bilingual kids! For instance, she’ll repeat the vocab words twice and the speed’s just about right. Kudos to Yvonne for creating a helpful little resource - and for free!
Helpful learning aids: colour-coded text and glossary
As well as the triple text combo, Yvonne’s book comes with colour-coded text so it makes learning vocabulary easier, matching up Pinyin with Simplified Chinese characters and the English translation. Speaking of which, there’s a glossary at the back which makes those slightly trickier words easy to recap, too!
Adorable art and consistent quality
Honestly, who doesn’t love a good children’s book with good artwork? There’s clearly been a lot of effort made into making the drawings in this book cute (and has diverse representation as a plus!), with memorable little characters and engaging layouts. There’s a lot happening on every page spread, so you’ll keep coming back and noticing something new!
To top that, every page that we’ve seen so far have a consistent print quality: crisp lines, lovely colours, no bleeding or fraying.
Bring the book to life!
A book prepared for babies
We all know that babies and toddlers see books and they instantly think, “tear it to shreds!” But not with this book! Yvonne especially chose to create a board book so it’s chunky and chewable and will resist a good knocking. Every page on the inside has this laminate finish which makes it spill-resistant and mainly wipe clean.
8 Nursery Rhymes? Music to my ears!
Rhymes and songs have been used as teaching aids for absolutely ages now. I remember while I was doing my GCSEs, my teacher asked us to learn a song about musical techniques and features of our set pieces. It was a fun way to learn them all, that’s for sure! Music helps engage children with learning, so why not use it every day?
Learn a nursery rhyme from this book of eight and get your kid to sing it with you. You may find that they’ll learn the words really quickly!
Using props and printables
We like to use props when reading with kids because it gives them physical objects to relate words and sounds to. You could use toys or flashcards or our printable 3D pop-up book for ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ and you may find it useful to do various other activities and engage with the book… outside of the book! Yvonne’s got some great resources on her website which work great with reading, too.
Other thoughts...
Luka’s going to learn, too!
According to a little bird, Luka owners will also be able to read this book with their little reading robot! We’re not sure when this will be available… but keep posted for more!
If you’re looking for bilingual tips…
You should definitely check out Yvonne's website and follow her on Instagram. Yvonne’s created engaging and beautiful platforms to help you access and engage with her content, so don’t miss out on some great resources and tips.
Conclusion
My Bilingual Book of Nursery Rhymes is the fruit of a bilingual parent’s labour. It’s well thought out and well executed. It delivers on so many points, with Pinyin, Simplified Chinese and English text in parallel, adorable artwork, free audio guides, large font, and colour-coded text. Plus, it all comes in a hardy form factor! You couldn’t go wrong with it. It’s a wonderful debut book and we hope we’ll see more from Yvonne Tee in the future!
What do you think of My Bilingual Book of Nursery Rhymes? Did you find this review useful? Let us know in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!
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