Celia Jenkins

Ben and Maki - Let's Be Friends Celia Jenkins

Ben and Maki is a series of bilingual picture books (English and Japanese) aiming to help children read fluently in both languages. Through these cute characters, readers can learn language in context by focusing on clear lexical sets, which have been carefully graded by a trained language teacher. Book one in the series (Let's Be Friends) focuses on introductory language, and the lexical set is family members. This is a basic concept which all children will understand, and they will pick up the new language easily. For English language learners, an understanding of the alphabet and previous experience of reading simple English words and sentences is recommended. For Japanese language learners, an understanding of hiragana is necessary, as well as initial exposure to Japanese words. The Ben and Maki books come with free worksheets and colouring pages which can be downloaded from the Ben and Maki website. (https: //www.celiajenkins.com/ben-and-maki) These worksheets will help consolidate learning and help readers to remember new words. Children who are not yet able to read will enjoy being guided through the book, aided by the illustrations.