Reviews

Ideal for children encountering multicultural friends at school and at play, the Bilingual Picture Dictionaries series is a comfortingly uniform presentation that makes simple language exchanges fun and easy--well, pretty easy. Each book features 13 spreads that are identical between books: a bathroom, a kitchen, a farm, a garden, and so forth. The pictures are full bleed and have the brilliant, bright look of a catalogue. What changes between volumes, of course, are the words in the information bubbles, each of which features three lines: the word in English, the word in the foreign language, and the pronunciation. My First Book of Arabic Words begins with an intro explaining how Arabic is written right to left and how certain sounds do not have English equivalents. Some pronunciations will be surprisingly familiar ("mother" is om), while others are mind-blowingly different ("kite" is ta'eraa waraqeya). My First Book of Hindi Words will delight with the language's squiggly appearance, though some pronunciations are sure to baffle (PA-nv). My First Book of Italian Words will be the most familiar to most readers as well as the funnest to say out loud (pee-JAH-mah). The various Italian words for "the" are explained in an intro. With its repetitive format, this is not for browsing but makes for good kindergarten ready reference.-- "Booklist"