Which Book Should be My First Chinese Book?

[BigChief45]

Hello everyone.

I've been wanting to start reading Chinese books. I only know around ~350 characters and maybe x2 or x3 words? Which I could know how to find out that.

Anyways, I would like suggestions on what book should I pick up first. I want a book that has common vocabulary, maybe a children's book. Also I want the book to have new vocabulary so that it forces me to learn new words to add to my own vocabulary.

Any suggestions are well appreciated, Thank you

[imron]

You're probably not at the level yet where you can tackle a proper book without it being a severe discouragement. You might consider something like the Chinese Breeze series of graded readers (search the forums for more info), which should have reading material aimed at this level.

[Murray]

You should definitely stick to readers instead of actual books.

Chinese Breeze is great because their level one books are right around where you are (300 characters) plus, if you have a Kindle or Kindle Cloud Reader, you can buy them on Amazon for super cheap compared to a paperback copy.

[Susu]

There are quite a few websites with Chinese stories - the great things about these are that you can get an instant dictionary so you don't lose the storyline/heart too much when you don't know too many of the words.

Recently I saw one that you can download onto your phone and has an audio function too.

www.decipherchinese.com

The beginner app has lots of idiom stories.

[Aneena]

I loved the Chinese breeze, this was my favorite:

http://www.amazon.com/Really-Chinese-Breeze-Graded-Reader/dp/B00127AJFQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341993854&sr=1-1&keywords=I+Really+Want+to+Find+Her

Well not in French, plus in my local store it costs $7 not $15, but it was a very good choice for my very first book in Chinese. The beginning was difficult, I needed to check a lot of characters in the dictionary, but since it's only 300 characters and you keep on getting the same stuff over and over again after a couple of pages it gets much better! Plus you get a CD so you can listen to it, it really helped me a lot, now I already finished reading all the books from level 2 and preparing to start level 3.