Mandy and Pandy are a little Chinese girl and a Panda Bear who have been paired up to create a cute series of 6 books to give a basic introduction to the Chinese culture and their language for English speaking children. Each book is accompanied with an audio CD which includes English text read by a native English speaker and Chinese text read by a native Chinese speaker.  When you are the mom of a Chinese born/American raised daughter, books like this are EXACTLY what you are looking for to help your daughter feel proud of her heritage and learn some more about it at the same time.

We received the Mandy and Pandy Play Sports book.  It is a board book perfect for PreK to younger elementary students. The text is fairly simple, and each page features the story in English, then in Mandarin Chinese characters, and then spelled out phonetically in Chinese. As I said before, there is a CD that goes along with the book. The first track was a sort of introduction, but the second track was a clear rendition of the story — first spoken in English, then repeated conversationally in Chinese. The subsequent tracks tell the story only in Chinese, slowly enough that you could learn to speak it.  Each line in the books is shown in English, Simplified Chinese characters and Pinyin (i.e. how you “sound out” the characters).

The books showcase stories including various sports from baseball, to football, to swimming, to volleyball, to soccer, to gymnastics which P3 will get to start soon, to track which increases it’s appeal to kids interested in all sorts of activities. Oftentimes we only see one type of sport, but Pandy (the friendly Panda Bear), tells Mandy at the beginning of the book, “I enjoy playing many sports.”  How can you not love that?

Mandy and Pandy books are available for purchase online now or you can find them at your local Borders or Barnes & Noble bookstores.  You can also check out the Mandy and Pandy ebook sample.  They are available for approximately $12.95 each.

…and now the small print…

Our review copy was provided by the publisher and KidStuff PR.  Other than the copy of Mandy and Pandy Play Sports that I was sent, I was not provided with anything or enticed to do this review in any way. This review is solely my opinion of this book, its entertaining qualities and its educational value.