Elephant and Piggie

I first discovered Elephant and Piggie at the library a few years ago when I would check out books. I purposely searched Chinese books at the library and would pick from what they had. One of the books we checked out was an Elephant and Piggie book. I didn't even realize it was an entire series until one of my student's parents saw the book and recognized it. At first I thought she had read it in her native language, but then she told me it was a popular children's book series. 

That's when I realized there was a whole series on Elephant and Piggie. This series can be slightly controversial because the "quality" of the books is debatable. Some people argue that they're not great books because the language is simple and there's no real point to the books. For an English book, I might agree. There are other books in English I'd rather my children read. So no, I would never buy the series in English. Library? Sure, why not. Buy? Nope.

I did enjoy the one we checked out. In English, it would have been Are You Ready to Play Outside? I enjoyed reading this book to my daughter in Chinese because I could actually read most of the characters. There were a few I had to look up, but overall, it wasn't bad. 

The first Elephant and Piggie book I discovered, in Chinese.

At the end of last year, I found an entire set of them in Chinese I could purchase for a reasonable price. I bought it, almost no questions asked. It shipped quickly, and I was so excited to open them after they arrived. My daughter loves reading them with me and I love being able to read most of the text. 

A few of the books in the series have words above my vocabulary so I started out reading them with my phone next to me to look up words I didn't recognize. Thankfully, I understand stroke order and the dictionary handwriting recognition is very smart so it's a pretty quick process. 

The "quality" of the books doesn't bother me because I don't believe it contains anything that is necessarily  bad. Sure, the grammar is simple and the book itself is pretty basic, but since it is in Chinese, I would be happy to read it to her knowing we would actually read it. I am not against having more quality Chinese books, but the problem is I cannot read half of it easily. If I can't read it easily, I'm less likely to pick it up and want to read it, and it is less likely to captivate my daughter. The few I do have, I've had to work really hard reading multiple times to become familiar with the text and recognize more of the difficult words. 

I will probably need to study up and learn new words as I read to my children in the future. Let's hope my kids have the patience to wait for me, too. 😅