A picture is worth a thousand words., August 2, 2002

I wish I had this book three years ago, when I first came to Korea. When I saw the profusely illustrated materials which my English students were enjoying, I felt somewhat envious.

If Montessori was right, actual objects aid in learning betters than pictures, and pictures aid in learning better than print on the page. Too bad we don't have books like this for foreign language students at all levels.

Good to get you started, but ignore Romanizations, September 25, 2003

This book is great to get you started with learning some of the basic words so that you can apply them to sentences later. However, like many books on Korean, the Romanization is aweful. If I did not already know the alphabet and pronouniations, I would have been been saying all the words very wrong (www.langintro.com is a great place to learn along with a native Korean speaker). I was always having to cover up the Romanizations on the flashcards because my native-English eye would go right to them. I also found that I stopped using the little excercies mid-way through the book and just used the flash cards.

Can be useful, if you have a basic understanding of Korean, May 30, 2002

This book has many errors in it.
The pronunciation for some of the letters are wrong.
("aw" is shown as "o", for example)
And even the definition of some of the words are wrong.
(the book shows the word "nan-lo" means "stove", but, really means "heater")
Don't use this book to learn how to read and write Hangul.
It can be helpful to learn vocabulary, as long as you have a friend who knows Korean to make sure you are learning the words correctly.

A good beginners book., January 30, 2002

Very good book for the begginer, not an advanced book. Very simple to follow and the flash cards are a nice feature. You will not learn Korean from this book, but it will make a good companion to begginer just to get familiar with korean words.

Great idea, glaring mistakes, September 23, 2001
Reviewer: A reader
The format of this book is fantastic- a fun and effective way to learn some basic Korean vocabulary!
Unfortunately, there are some BASIC errors in the given pronunciations of Korean letters. If you just use this book, you will be mispronouncing some common, necessary letters.
My recommendation: Get another book, CD, website, or friend to learn to pronounce Hangul. Then use this book to ease the drudgery of memorizing vocabulary, and have make a game of finding the mistakes in it!

Teaches What It Says It Will, August 22, 2001

I like the book. Plenty of exercises to beat the script into your head. Kinda fun to do these childlike exercises, too.