The Monkey's Paw: Mandarin Companion Graded Readers Level 1, Simplified Chinese Edition Paperback – November 11, 2013

I think there are two camps of Mandarin learners: those who avoid characters and those who embrace them. I was firmly in the first camp…until I read this book. I don’t think I was fully prepared for how much I would enjoy it, and now I can see the usefulness (and fun) of learning to read Chinese.The book description says its for learners who know 300 characters, and that seems accurate. I’ve been studying spoken Chinese for almost a year and know roughly 1500-2000 words, but I’ve only started studying characters a month ago and know about 300. The first few chapters were slow-going. In each paragraph, I had to look up 1-2 characters (in addition to the lower-frequency keywords the book lists in its glossary). But by the end, I was breezing though it.I chose The Monkey’s Paw as my first Chinese book because I was already familiar with the story (a childhood favorite of mine). This version stays more or less true to the original, and even though I already knew what was going to happen, the events still pack an emotional punch (which is impressive, considering the 300-character limitation). The characters are well realized, and their inner lives are well expressed. There is a lot of repetition in the descriptions—certain words and grammatical structures are used over and over—but for the language learner, this is a good thing. In the end, I not only improved my ability to recognize high-frequency characters, but I’ve also picked up some vocabulary and grammar along the way.Regarding the format, I chose the Kindle version because I thought the digital format would make it easier for me to look up characters. I found this to be true on my iPhone, but on my Kindle Paperwhite, I couldn’t figure out how to import a Chinese-English dictionary (if you know how to do this, please share in the comments). However, I subsequently bought the paperback version of another Mandarin Companion Reader (The Country of the Blind) and found that format to be superior. Not only does it look better, but it’s actually easier to look up words. Keyword definitions are listed in the footnotes (rather than just the glossary) so you don’t even have to flip the pages. And if you have Pleco’s OCR reader, you can easily look up characters that way as well.

This is a great book in a great series from Mandarin Companion. I would recommend this book to any intermediate student of the Chinese language to practice their reading skills and really build confidence in their learning.As a graded Chinese reader, this book uses the concept of 'extensive reading' and fully accomplishes its goal to provide a fun and enjoyable story, with smooth and relatively 'easy' Chinese vocabulary and grammar. The book allows you to enjoy the story, while internalizing the flow of language and improving your reading comprehension.The story is a fun adaptation of The Monkey's Paw to a spooky Chinese context. I remember this story well from when I was young. Great to read it now in Chinese.Kindle version is great and convenient for language students. You can read on various devices, highlight words as you read, navigate easily, etc.

Gave it as a gift

This is the first mandarin companion graded reader that I have completed. I have been studying Chinese on and off for about five years now. I did learn several new vocabulary words but found that, at my current level of knowledge, I was able to comprehend the vast majority of the plot without having to look up something. The plot is interesting and I love how the dictionary is interwoven into the text to the book. I look forward to reading more of these!

Great story with a lot of build up until the end. It was a disappointing ending in comparison to the "Blind Man's Country", but I checked. The story ends similarly in English.In terms of the Chinese vocabulary and grammar, it was at an appropriate level and was made more interesting than usual by a suspenseful story.Add more suspenseful stories like this. The original author of the Monkey's Paw has written other good stories as well.

Really enjoyable to read for a beginner intermediate like me. And to reread! I've been reading the chapters over again out loud, which is excellent practice and encourages me to become more fluent in Chinese speaking. I really need more confidence applying the Chinese that I know to reading and especially speaking, and this helps.The traditional characters version is great. There were only one or two mistakes (the only one I recall is 雲南 spelled 云南 in one place).Sadly Kindle readers provide simplified Chinese dictionaries only, but that's for Amazon to fix.I found the end of the story a little abrupt and disappointing, but that's just the story. I guess I'll have to start a new one soon.

I really enjoy reading the Mandarin Companion books. They are a fun and effective way to increase my Chinese level. I've read all of the level 1 books, and although it is a great book this one was my least favorite. It was a little darker than the other ones, which isn't usually my choice in fiction. I still recommend it and it still gets 5 stars from me, because it was a good book that I enjoyed reading and helped me learn Chinese.

One of the issues with learning languages, particularly a difficult character based language as Chinese, is that it takes a long time to be able to read a book or newspaper article. This “success experience” is missing when just focusing on learning words or staying with study books. The graded series gives you this success experience.