Brandon and his cousins are on a trip to visit their grandparents in Beijing, China! While bonding with family, practicing Chinese, touring historic sites and feasting on local dishes, Brandon thinks he sees a tiny panda. However, every time he gets close, the panda disappears! Is Brandon imagining this small creature, or is it real? Will Brandon find out before he has to fly back home?Brandon … Goes to Beijing (北京) is a multicultural, multigenerational chapter book which includes some Mandarin Chinese (Simplified) with Pinyin pronunciation, adding layers for those learning or interested in the Chinese language and culture.
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Excellent bilingual, informative, funny and touching story!
I recommend ‘Brandon Goes to Beijing’ by Eugenia Chu for different reasons:
– Reading this book is an extra-ordinary experience for Chinese-American kids, and all who speak as well English as Chinese. The Chinese words are brought into the story in a very organic way.
– In the beginning, as a not-Chinese-speaking person, I was a bit afraid that the Chinese words would annoy me, but the story is written so well that this was totally not the case. I loved to read the word ‘xióngmāo’ loud (probably not with the right intonation, so who knows what I am saying :). I think this book is also nice to be read by people who learn Chinese.
– I never visited China, of course, I had read and heard information about Beijing before. But reading this story was as I was visiting myself. It is very informative, and told through the eyes of the children, their experiences, their joy… it gave some information I didn’t have before.
– I love Eugenia Chu’s writing style. I was totally taken into the story. It is a touching book, when the kids were saying goodbye to Xiao Ming–Nǐ, the little panda, I felt a tear coming up too. It is as if I was with Brandon and his family on this wonderful trip.
For sure I recommend this book highly!
Some vacations are full of surprises!
Brandon and his family visited so many well-known parts of China during their trip. It was fun to see what he and his cousins thought of all of the famous places they saw as well as the delicious meals they got to eat. There was a nice balance between learning a little bit of Chinese history, visiting memorable spots, and eating tasty food. It sounded like the sort of vacation any kid or adult would appreciate!
I would have liked to see more foreshadowing included in this book. There were a couple of plot twists that came up out of nowhere in my opinion. Since they were connected to the mystery subplot, it would have been helpful to have a hint or two about what was happening there so that I could have had better luck figuring out if my guesses about how everything would turn out were actually close to the truth.
With that being said, I did enjoy the mystery elements of the plot quite a bit. Was it really a small panda that Brandon saw at the beginning of his trip? I smiled at his answer to that question and waited patiently to see if his guess was the correct one. This was a nice way to add a little friendly tension to a vacation that was otherwise going exactly the way everyone thought it would.
I’d recommend Brandon Goes to Beijing to anyone who enjoys traveling or learning about other countries.
My daughters and I enjoyed this story. It is a chapter book with black and white illustrations. The book includes a guide in the front of the book for proper pronunciation of of the Chinese words. The author does a great job of combining the Chinese words and symbols into the text for the English speaking reader to understand the meaning of the words. Since we aren’t too familiar with Chinese, we were glad to find that the author has an audio version of the book on her website.
We enjoyed the story which has educational aspects to it from learning different Chinese words and phrases, to learning about places in China. It is fun to read with an aspect of mystery to it which has to do with the cute little panda bear pictured on the front cover of the book.
We would recommend this book to kids around ages 7-12.