Preschool Reads:《首先有一个苹果》First There was an Apple

This is the first Chinese book Little Man accepted after rejecting many many of them. He is sooooooo picky. 🙄 For a long time this was the only book he would read.

The beauty of this book is the cute and humorous illustrations, and it’s very easy to understand even for the child who doesn’t know much Chinese. The meaning of each sentence is evident in the picture.

Aside from counting 1-10, it has a funny twist: 数不清 (uncountable) bees!

We’ve read this so many times that Little Man can recite entire sentences from this book. He normally speaks in 1-2 words in Chinese so it is amazing to hear full sentences coming out from his mouth!

After reading this book a hundred times, I got a little bored so I replaced them with my own words, e.g. “首先有一个… 草莓” (“First there was a… strawberry”). This makes Little Man giggle to no end and he loves making up his own silly sentences too.

This book is by a Japanese author/illustrator Hiroshi Ito who has written several other acclaimed children’s books shown below. I’m looking into buying some more. 🙂

Buy from: World Taobao (China), EZBuy (Singapore) or China Sprout (USA)

Publisher: 二十一世纪出版社 21st Century Publishing House

ISBN: 7539130474