Review: If You Were Me and Lived in China by Carole P. Roman

Title: If You Were Me and Lived in...China: A Child's Introduction to Culture Around the World
Author: Carole P. Roman
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: Paperback, 30 pages
Source: Word Slinger Publicity


Book Description:

I have always wanted to visit China and thanks to Ms. Roman's book she had made it more exciting and interesting to know what to look for and see


China which is officially known as the People's Republic of China which has a population of more the 135 billion people living there which is the most populated country in the world.

You might of learned about the Yangtze River which is in the South, or the Yellow River which is located in the North. Although the capital is Beijing many people called it Peking, China has major highways, trains and expressways and the second busiest airport in the world.

Children's names are picked because they have meanings so boys who are called An which means peace or Bao which is another word for treasure and Fu for happiness. Girls are called Hong because they like the color red, Yu which stands for Jade which is a gemstone or Zi which is the word for smart. What would you like to be called if you lived in China? I think I would like to be called Zi.

China has some amazing places to visit like the Great Wall of China. It is a stone barricaded which was built thousands of years ago to keep strangers out of China. Nobody is sure but they believe it is about 5,500 hundred miles. Another very famous tourist site is the giant clay army that was only recently discovered that had been buried underground for more then two thousand years. You will be told that there are over eight thousand individually sculpted soldiers and about 520 statues of horses and 130 of just chariots. You will love explore the many tourist sites as you will have an opportunity to learn so much.

The New year is a very fun holiday to be part of and begins at midnight with fireworks which hope that the noise will chase off the evil spirits. It is a very important day to honor your grandparents. You would receive red envelops filled with good luck money. Because the celebration last fifteen days you will get to enjoy many delicious meals but better learn how to use the chopsticks because if you drop them it could bring you bad luck. They are very superstitious people.

Review:

★★★


I think this book series is overall a great concept. It introduces a new culture to kids in an approachable way, and makes it more fun to learn something new. I think this book needs some more work, but overall it's a pretty solid way to teach kids about Chinese culture.

What I did like was the actual information that's in place. I'm an adult in my twenties, and even I learned some cool new stuff about Chinese culture. The illustrations are fun, and go well with the text that is placed alongside it on the page. I think kids will enjoy looking at the pictures. I also appreciated that the "foreign" words were given a pronunciation in parenthesis after the word, so you know how to properly say it. There's also a neat little glossary in the back, to define the aforementioned new words.

But there was some not-so-good stuff too. There are quite a few typos in the edition that I received. That's not really an ideal thing, when the goal of this book is to educate children. I also think there's way too much text on some of the pages. I think it'll overwhelm a child who is reading on their own, and make them fidgety if they are being read to. It flowed better when it was broken down into shorter ideas, instead of full paragraphs.

With another wave of editing, I think this could be a great series. They contain a lot of information in a simple way that makes it easy for kids to learn something new. There are other books in this line, that offer other insights to cultures, and I like that idea a lot. In the future, it'll make a great tool for teachers.

I received a copy in exchange for my honest review.