McNaughton simplified characters., March 1, 2006
　

i had the other book (traditional characters) from the same author. big font, useful to me. however, it is difficult to learn chinese or any other language by memorizing individual words/character. you need a complete sentence. anyway, etymology reference/ explanation is rare, random, not enough, in this book, compared to other books.

A Beautiful Picture of Chinese Characters, September 15, 2005
　

Forget the other character books ! This is the one that
will get you over this hurdle ! Clear and sharp pictures of
every character, together with stroke order, pronunciation and
relation to other characters. Go after the big first thousand,
and then you will be ready to tackle the following 2000. This
book points out all the dangers and traps you'll run into in
your quest for mastery. You'll love it and keep it under your
pillow ! Bill K.

Worth waiting for, August 15, 2005
　

Glad I waited for this new edition to come out, rather than settling for the older version. A great reference and study tool. Armed with this book plus my trusty dictionary, I am ready to face unknown words.

Same problems as traditional version: Index riddled with errors, August 8, 2005
　

The first entry I looked up in the index, 'xiang(1,4)', was listed as being on p 368 but in reality was on p 386. Pretty bad for a reference book, where being able to look things up is kind of important. Looks like they learned nothing from publishing the original, traditional characters, version. That index was also error-ridden.

This could've been a very useful book if they had hired an editor or even a proofreader. Shameful job.