Title: What Was It Like, Mr. Emperor?
Author: Chiu Kwong-chiu & Eileen Ng
Illustrations: Design and Cultural Studies Workshop
Translation: Ben Wang
We received this awhile back in exchange for an honest review and it took us awhile to get through it – not because it isn’t brilliant, but because it is long, especially for a kids’ picture book.
The information is fantastic, the pictures fun. But What Was It Like, Mr. Emperor? should have been serialized.
It wouldn’t be hard to do as there are already mini chapter-like breaks. Kids like my own five year old would respond better to it being shorter titles that they could collect like a series as opposed to reading bits of the same book each night. Ultimately, it’s the same amount of reading for the same amount of time, but kids see it differently for some reason, and they tend to like to collect things anyway.
We loved all the tidbits about Life in China’s Forbidden City, but as a customer, reader, mother, author, bookseller, reviewer, and someone who possesses a BBA in Marketing, I think there could be a lot more money into turning this title into a series of smaller books.
