For many of us, Chinese is our kids’ minority language and often weaker and non-preferred. Hence it is important to find books that are highly captivating. All the books I buy are specific for my son’s age, level, interests and tastes. He loves superheroes and adventure and all that is 打打杀杀.
I follow this tip from Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability: increase the number of Chinese books and simultaneously decrease the number of English books. I’ve cut back on buying English books/materials and we don’t go to the library as often as we used to. This has worked extremely well and my son now often picks up Chinese books to read or thumb through.
Back to what this post is about… I think I have all the superhero books on the Simplified Chinese market. 😝
I listed the books below in order of language difficulty from easiest to hardest — the first four on the list are picture books and the last three are bridge books (difference explained here).
1. 超人兔 Super Bunny series
These stories are short and hilarious and perfect for beginners. My favorite part is the BIG FONT which makes it great for joint reading. I usually read most of the story and have my son read the big words, which are all easy characters. Be forewarned that it has inappropriate language like “臭㞎㞎” (stinky poop) which made my son laugh and laugh and laugh.
2. 青椒小超人 Green Pepper series
I love love love this Japanese-translated series. The illustrations are soooo cute and the stories are all healthy and teach nice morals like eat more vegetables to defeat germs, exercise every day, don’t trust strangers, etc. They are paperbacks but the quality is excellent.
3. 神奇侠 Magical Bandit series
This series is by the famous Japanese author 宫西达也 who has a very distinctive drawing style. These two are quick, easy, and funny reads and my son enjoys the humor. It’s about kids who complain about their boring toothpaste. The magical bandit invents magical toothpaste which turns them into giant food heads. The kids realize their regular toothpaste is pretty awesome and stop whining about brushing their teeth. Ha!
4. 正义联盟故事 DC Superheroes 5-Minute Stories
This book is just okay. The binding is poor and the pages are falling out even though we didn’t even read it that much. The best thing about this book is I learned a lot of my son’s favorite DC superhero names in Chinese and it has pinyin. Don’t buy this unless you have a huge DC fan.
4. 我们的校长是超人 Captain Underpants series
This is my son’s favorite series in English and we love it in Chinese too. The translation is very good and I often burst out laughing. 😆 The best thing about this series is the pages correspond exactly to the English version so it’s easy for him to understand since he’s read it in English a million times.
Although these are chapter books, I find them fairly easy to read (as an adult with okay Chinese skills), with only 5-10 characters per book that I don’t know. The chapters are short so it’s easy to read 3-5 chapters in one sitting. Highly recommend for Captain Underpants fans.
5. 屁屁超人 Fart Boy series
I have three of these Fart Boy books as part of 阅读123, Set 1. Each book has three short stories. This series is from Taiwan and the language and storyline has a distinctive Asian flavor (e.g. the principal pulling the boy’s ear). It is harder for my son to understand but I do really like this exposure to Taiwan-Mandarin vocabulary and culture.
When we first read this two months ago, my son did not like it because he couldn’t comprehend it. We recently tried it again and he enjoyed it and requested it a few times. So even if your child rejects a book now, don’t give up! Give it a few months and try again.
6. 怪杰佐罗力 Zorori series
I’ve never heard of Zorori before but apparently it is crazy popular among elementary students in Japan (where it’s from) and Taiwan. I find it rather challenging to read because of the up-down print which I’m not used to. The book is also rather long — it is one whole long story without being divided into chapters. Right now this series is sitting on the shelf until we finish Fart Boy and Captain Underpants.
Where To Buy: All of the above books were purchased from Taobao which ships to many countries including the USA. If you copy and paste the titles into the TB search bar you should be able to find them. For details on how to order from TB, refer to my updated TB shopping guide here.
{If you know of other good superhero books, let me know! Follow me on Facebook and Instagram to stay updated on my blog posts.}
Hands-On Chinese Fun! 