The Ice-Skating Competition

IceSkatingI got the second of the Popcorn ELT Readers, the British books for beginning English learners, today, and pretty much my review of the previous one applies to The Ice-Skating Competition. The big difference here is that instead of telling several tales, this book tells one long  (well, long for the format) one, a strip-based tale of Peppermint Patty preparing for an ice skating competition with Snoopy as her trainer and Marcie as her involuntary dressmaker and hair stylist. Presumably, this greater length goes along with it being a level 3 rather than a level 2 reader. And yes, I got the version with the CD again. One warning for those who might be interested in using these to train people in English: they use British punctuation, such as using ‘single quotes’ for quotation, rather than “double quotes”. Oh, those exotic foreign types! But other than that, it’s a perfectly fine little chapter book, with humor that survives better than some strip-to-text translations.

Classic finds
A needle-ssly fine present

Being a) an adult and b) not a Christmasian, it makes sense that I’m not given much in the way of Christmas presents. This year’s haul was just two items, both given by Dr. Mrs. The AAUGH Blogger: a Terry’s Chocolate Orange (yum!), and this Peanuts embroidery book from Japan. …

New releases
Double Love

Simon Spotlight has dropped two books for the Valentine’s Day Shopping Season, and they’re pretty similar. Love is Everywhere, Snoopy! is a board book that is supposed to be Charlie Brown explaining love to Snoopy (who is said to have asked, which raises the usual how-does-Snoopy-communicate-to-Charlie-Brown question.) Charlie Brown answers …

New releases
“Books”

My grocery shopping today landed me two new Peanuts “books”. The more bookish of the two is the latest edition of The Great Big Book of Peanuts Word Seeks, volume 5 to be precise, which as I’ve mentioned before I’ll allow to qualify as a book… particularly because it not …