Tag Archives: CD

Book+CD Review: Chinese and English Nursery Rhymes

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We’ve shared our enthusiasm for Speak and Sing Chinese with Mei Mei, but while Mei Mei wins top points for enthusiasm, her production values leave a bit to be desired. Also, CD liner notes just don’t cut it for toddlers to read. So we were excited to receive this book-and-CD set as a gift for Jacob from Gene’s sister.

Chinese and English Nursery Rhymes: Share and Sing in Two Languages is a nice hardcover with colorful illustrations, and the music on the CD sounds professional and clear. You get a lot of content for your dollar: 20 songs in English and 20 in Chinese. The price is worth it for the CD alone! And you’ve heard many of these songs before, so it’s easy to sing along.

I find the pages just a little too crammed and the typeface too small. This allows more songs to fit into the pages, creating good value, but that makes it hard for Jacob to ask for one particular song (or for me to read the lyrics when the lights are dim). The pictures are vivid and interesting, though that can make the text even harder to read (for example, when printed black-on-blue).

The songs are organized thematically (Outside, Inside, Party, Play, Night), but I think there could have been even closer alignment among them. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” “Happy Birthday to You,” and “Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” are matched with their Chinese translations, but more pairings would have been nicer for purposes of language acquisition of parent as well as child. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why there are English songs in here that aren’t translations of the Chinese. If I wanted music in English, I’d go buy that separately – as nice as these songs are, there are better from American artists.

Overall, this book-CD combination is well worth its value – I recommend it, despite the criticisms above. So far, Jacob has not been smitten with this book, but he’s still at the stage where a single-song book, or just humming a tune, is his best way of asking for music. Maybe as he gets older this book will become more fun for him.

CD Review: Chinese Lullabies

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Parents suffering from sleepless babies will pay anything for relief, and retailers make fortunes off pseudo-scientific quackery. Chinese Lullabies is the real deal: music that really can help a baby go to sleep. Or, at least, our little Jacob.

I’ll admit this CD won’t teach either you or your child much Chinese, except maybe “mā ma” (mother) and “bǎo bao” (precious one). It’s hard to glean Chinese out of singing, where tones are distorted; the Chinese in these songs are formally poetic (that is, not everyday language), and I find children’s voices (with lots of echo) hard to discern. Maybe if you really know your Chinese, you’ll do better than I.

What recommends this CD is the music, which is decidedly Chinese and not some Chinese translation of “Rock-a-bye-baby.” It’s uniformly soothing and peaceful – what you’d want from a lullaby album. The instrumentation seems to be a mix of authentic instruments and synthesizers, but it actually works. (I’ve got some other Chinese children’s CDs whose over-the-top synthetic sounds definitely do NOT work).

Jacob’s gone to sleep to this music for nearly nine months now – he doesn’t really need it anymore, so we occasionally skip it. We can’t really prove that this music soothes him because it’s good or because he’s so familiar with it after hearing it for most of his life, but really – isn’t the point of these lullaby CDs really to soothe the parents after a long day? I say yes. Buy this CD today.

CD Review: Speak & Sing Chinese with Mei Mei

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Speak & Sing Chinese with Mei Mei is one of the best resources we’ve come across for getting Chinese into a predominantly English-speaking family. The CD comprises a mix of basic vocabulary lessons and songs that incorporate those words. For example, the lesson on body parts is followed, naturally, by a Chinese version of the well-known English children’s song Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. There’s no drilling on tones, grammar, or any of that, just “repeat after me” words.

Jacob loves this CD; for a while, it was an indispensible part of his morning routine. As we’re still waiting for his first words of any language, we can’t know if he’s learning any Chinese (or English).

Gene: I think this is a wonderful resource for both children and parents. Songs and music are fun and much easier to remember than just vocabulary words themselves. I find myself humming or singing many of the tunes from this CD throughout the day. Mei Mei exaggerates her pronunciation and tones, which I think makes it easier for a non-Chinese-speaker to pick up on the hardest aspects of the Chinese language.

For whatever reason Hu Mei Mei isn’t selling the rest of her resources on Amazon, but you can find them on her site, Mei Mei and Me. The DVDs (and VHS!) seem quite dated; I hope she does some upgrading soon as I really like this introductory CD. Highly recommended!