(Please note that I was not paid to provide this review)
Website: https://en.lelechinese.com/
What Is This? Le Le Reading Books is a collection of 300 children’s Chinese books, sorted by easy (100 red books), medium (100 yellow books), and hard (100 green books). There is a reading pen that allows the user to hear either individual characters, the entire sentence (available in the easy red books and medium yellow books), or the entire page (green hard books).
Kudos to Chalk Academy for providing a wonderful review of the Le Le Reading Pen Books. This is a big investment (around $1,000 USD) for 300 books, flashcards, and a reading pen. Chalk Academy’s detailed review helped us take the leap and try it out. As a non-native Chinese speaker, I’m happy to say this is exactly what I was seeking for my five-year-old child.
A person generally needs to know around 2,000 to 3,500 Chinese characters to be able to read a Chinese newspaper, and the Le Le Reading Program teaches kids around 1,000 characters. If your child manages to learn 1,000 characters through the Le Le Reading Program, then the $1,000 price tag isn’t too bad when you think about the cost per character. In addition, I’ve found that my own Chinese is improving as well, which is a nice side bonus!
Benefits
Here’s what I appreciate about the Le Le Reading Pen and Books.
(1) Fun Mini-Library: There are beginner (red books), middle (yellow books), and advanced (green books) levels of everyday stories, each around eight pages long and engaging enough to hold my child’s attention, for a total of 300 books. As someone who does not have access to many Chinese children’s books, I feel this is a great way to build everyday Chinese vocabulary through fun, engaging stories. Since children do not have long attention spans, I found the eight pages per story to be a great length. Finally, this series gives me a nice “mini Chinese children’s library,” which is sorely lacking in my local public library.
(2) Reading Pen: The reading pen sounds out the words, either by individual character (beginner and middle levels) or by the entire sentence or paragraph (all three levels). When I tried other Chinese books, I had to manually look up each character, which interrupted the reading flow and caused my child to lose interest. Even though the reading pen’s pace is very slow for the beginner and middle books, this is intentional so children can properly pronounce the characters. The advanced books have a more natural reading cadence. If you are a native Mandarin speaker, you may not need this pen; however, you might still consider it so your child can independently “read” on their own.
(3) There’s no Pinyin nor Zhuyin: Neither Pinyin nor Zhuyin are included, so kids are learning Chinese characters from the very start! I’m astonished at how quickly my child picked up Chinese characters, and if I had to guess, I think she knows a few hundred after starting the Le Le books four or five months ago. Both my husband and I suspect that teaching Pinyin or Zhuyin—two phonetic systems for pronouncing Mandarin Chinese—can become a crutch when learning characters. So we’re very happy that this set of books avoids using Pinyin and Zhuyin.
(4) Flashcards (Black and Red): This was a cool twist on Chinese flashcards that I didn’t expect. The front of each flashcard shows a set of Chinese characters in black text, while the back displays a single character in red text. For example, the word “海浪” (hǎilàng), meaning “ocean wave,” shows up in two flashcards. Both flashcards will display “海浪” in black text on one side, but one card will display “海” in red text on the back, while the second card displays “浪” in red text on the back.
Areas for Improvement
It took me a few weeks to come up with an improvement list, but it would be nice if the Le Le Reading Program offered the following:
(1) Flashcards:It would be helpful to have a computer program or app that stores all the flashcards, tracks which cards your child is struggling to memorize, and turns them into some type of game. Having to manually create your own lists—either physically or by entering words into a third-party app—can be time-consuming. In addition, it would be nice if there were a reading-pen option for the flashcards as well.
(2) Ebook Option: As much as I love physical books, having these books available electronically would be a great space saver. If the e-books could also read the words aloud, that would be a huge win.
How We Use the Le Le Reading Books and Pen
Step 1) Set aside 10 to 20 minutes a day: If our child participates and stays engaged when we read the Le Le books, she earns a token to put into her prize jar. Once the prize jar is filled, she gets to choose a toy of her choice. (Dollar Tree and Five Below have great, inexpensive prize options.)
Step 2) Read the books: Pick one reading topic, such as colors, food, animals, or clothing. For example, the animal books in the Beginner Level are books #19 through #33. Go through the books with your child, using the reading pen as needed. Some topics have more books than others, so when starting out, you may want to choose a topic with fewer books.
Step 3) Flashcards: Once your child can read about 80–90% of the books without the reading pen, switch to the flashcards. Start with the black side, and once accuracy reaches about 80–90%, move on to the red cards. Since flashcards can be more challenging for my child to stay engaged with, I sometimes create mini competitions between my child and my husband to see who can read the cards faster. Sometimes this works; other times, I’ll quiz her while she’s drawing. I then focus only on the cards she misses, which keeps the sessions shorter and more manageable.
Step 4) Repeat Steps 2 and 3 with a New Topic: Once your child is comfortable, repeat Steps 2 and 3 using a new reading topic.
Optional Steps: After signing up, Le Le Chinese regularly sends emails with additional activities ideas you can incorporate at home. I haven’t tried these yet, as Steps 1 through 4 above work well for our family.
Reading Pen Instructions
I couldn’t find any Le Le pen instructions online or by video. So here’s a quick picture reference guide:
Customer Support
I was very pleased to find that customer support was highly responsive when my reading pen started having issues. At first, they provided a replacement USB card. When that didn’t resolve the problem, they shipped me a brand-new pen at no additional cost. As someone who lives in the U.S., I was initially worried they might deny a replacement due to the cost of the pen and international shipping, but I’m happy to say they were extremely responsive, kind, and easy to work with throughout the process.
Kids Actually Like It
And probably the best part of these books is that my child:
- Finds the books fun to read (although she definitely has favorites)
- Incorporates the words into her daily life. For example, when she was trying on her shoes, she said “too small, too big, just right” in Chinese—lines straight from one of the books.
- Gets inspiration for her drawings. Here’s a mini book she created all by herself
