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Little Pim: Feelings

Name: Little Pim: Feelings
Author: Julia Pimsleur Levine
ISBN: 9781419700187

by Julia Pimsleur Levine

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Overview

The Little Pim book series adapts the most successful and effective elements from the award-winning Little Pim DVDs to promote fun with languages for young children. Each book incorporates an exciting blend of illustrations and photographs, as well as flaps and pull tabs to keep readers engaged. The stories are told in English, with words featured in Spanish and French (the most popular languages in the DVD series). Pronunciation guides for parents are included.

Colors showcases colors and objects, and Feelings focuses on emotions and expressions. Each book weaves its vocabulary into a hide-and-seek story featuring Little Pim as the narrator and concludes with a helpful review of the words learned.

About the Author, Julia Pimsleur Levine

Little Pim was created by Julia Pimsleur Levine, a mom who grew up bilingual and was looking for fun ways to introduce her young son to the French language. When she discovered there were no high-quality videos or DVDs for teaching toddlers a foreign language, she decided to create them herself—something for which she was uniquely qualified as a filmmaker, language teacher, and mother. Julia was inspired in part by having grown up in the language-teaching business. Her father, Dr. Paul Pimsleur, created one of the most popular and acclaimed audio language-teaching methods for adults. Creating Little Pim was her way of carrying on the family tradition of raising bilingual kids and sharing a love of learning with other families.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Launching an interactive reading series based on the Little Pim foreign-language learning products, this story centers on panda Little Pim's emotions when he gets lost. Readers are asked to pull tabs and lift flaps to reveal photographs of human children whose facial expressions match Pim's feelings; the emotions (scared, shy, etc.) are translated into French and Spanish along with phonetic pronunciations. One boy smiles in his first image, but after pulling the tab, he's fearful like Pim. Another boy happily holds a milkshake in his picture: "Oops! He's not scared!" Levine smoothly integrates foreign language vocabulary into her lesson on recognizing emotions. Available simultaneously: Little Pim: Colors. Ages 4–8. (Aug.)

Kirkus Reviews

This familiar name in language instruction turns out lackluster stories for a toddler audience. Little Pim plays outside and meets a caterpillar. Correlating colored type indicates the panda's varied feelings in English, Spanish and French, with pronunciation. The corresponding page features three photographs of individual children; lifting flaps or pulling tabs reveals two of the youngsters acting out the specific emotion (always a boy and a girl to depict the variations), while the third child is a decoy. The clunky phrases follow a straightforward but uninspired presentation. "The caterpillar leads Little Pim back to his tree! / But then she disappears. / Where did his new friend go? / Little Pim feels sad / triste [TREES-teh] / triste [treest]." The small type makes easy reading a challenge. The companion Colors follows much the same format as Little Pim looks for different-colored balloons for a celebration. These interactive elements allow for easy exploration, though the wooden tone dampens enthusiasm in both selections. Unfortunately, Little Pim's day is bland no matter how you say it. (Board book. 2-4)