A real 5 star start !!!, April 25, 2005
　

I just received the book, but in a glance I could know it is written by a master! It really has a phantastic method for the beginners: step by step it mixes " english-helping-words" (pyin yin) with the chinese characters! And slowly, as the new lessons come, it uses less and less pyin yin help. It works
wonderfuly! I am not so "beginner", for I could read the Lady in the Painting, but wanted to reinforce my chinese and pretend to buy the 2nd an 3rd books.Great!

Start Here, April 29, 2004
　

This is the first book in Wang's series of readers. It teaches 300 frequently used characters in various combinations and reinforces them through repetition. By the end of this book, you will actually remember all the characters (unlike the Practical Chinese Reader series) and you will be able to continue to the more advanced books in the series. There is also a supplementary reader published by Yale titled "The Lady in the Painting" (ISBN: 0887100430). This is a full 90-page story which uses the 300 characters from this book. The other two books in this series also have corresponding readers. If you start here, you will have an excellent foundation in written Chinese with the option of progressing to higher levels of proficiency.

Note: This book uses traditional characters and Yale romanization. Yale romanization is very easy to read if you can already read Pinyin.

A great first book, March 30, 2000
　

Read Chinese Book One is a great place to begin to learn Chinese characters. You must have a basic understanding of the Yale style of romanization and pronounciation of Chinese prior to beginning, but you can learn the grammar and the sentence structure from the introduction. I enjoyed using Read Chinese Book One the first time I read it over fifteen years ago, and I still use it as a refresher course when I want to brush up on my ability to read the Chinese Language.