As a bilingual parent, I do not recommend this book. I am fluent in both - English and Russian, so I wanted to share my opinion with others purely out of desire to steer other parents in the right direction.

Let me start with the POSITIVES:
- nice illustrations. They look like they were made for a younger audience, but appeal to adults as well
- ЗАМЕЧАТЕЛЬНЫЙ перевод с Английского на Русский
- OTHER book in the series («Великан Эгоист») is FANTASTIC! I highly recommend you choose that book over the one for which this review is written.

Now, onto the negatives...
- HORRIBLE storyline (сюжет). The story itself is dark, evil and quite lame. I would not read it to a child of ANY age. Additionally, the story was written over a century ago, and the events that happen in the book do not reflect the current lifestyle of people in the United States.
- The language in which the story is written is awkward and outdated. It was quite difficult to read, and my husband (a native English speaker!!) initially thought that it was “poorly translated” from a different language. Once we researched and realized that the text is original, and was written in English, we were even more disappointed! We have to significantly alter each sentence for it to make sense when we read it to our daughter, - no one speaks like this in English. And of course - the language is so outrageous that we had to further change the text when reading it - as to avoid using harsh and often racist language.

If you want to have a bilingual book, there are many other fantastic books that you can find. This one is just not it... Скрыть