Greek Salad

"It is filled with alliteration, imagination and brightly colored beautiful illustrations. Yes, it's meant to be for children, but I bought it for myself, an older person who is always trying to learn more Greek. Each page has sentences which are written in English with the equivalent Greek below and below the Greek are English characters with the phonetic pronunciation. What a fantastic idea! The language structures on each page are so varied, giving the reader examples of the possessive (Sofia's name day), the imperative (Come on cucumbers!), Question word order (Why is the onion crying?), dialogue (""Don't cry,"" says the friendly feta.) and so much more! The book also comes with some lovely colorful vocabulary word stickers. I only wish the author, Yiannis Nikolakopoulos, had written this sooner. I await the next book in this series with great anticipation. This is one book I whole-heartedly recommend for English-speaking children or adults who want to learn Greek AND EVEN FOR Greek children or Greek adults who want to learn English! I purchased 2 of these books for children that were just under 2 years old. Their parents loved the books! The illustrations are beautiful and bring a smile to your face and the child's! The book was also wrapped in tissue paper which was a nice touch. The story is cute and can be read in Greek, English and Greek phonetics in English (so a non-Greek speaker can read the story in Greek using English!). I thought this was a great feature of the book because we are in the US and some people do not regularly write or read Greek even though they speak it. It also comes with a stack of Greek alphabet cards. The Greek salad is a delightful book that teaches Greek in a unique way; not only does it teach a host of useful words and phrases, but it also introduces the reader to many facets of the Greek culture. For one, this book in the Grammatakia series is all about the infamous food culture that is immense in Greece. Sofia is celebrating her name day and is preparing a typical Greek salad for her guests, but the ingredients are not exactly cooperating. Instead, they are busying themselves with various Olympic games! The illustrations are a joy to behold, especially the ones featuring Sofia's cousins; they are a truly delightful bunch! There is also a sheet of stickers inside the book that I'm sure will delight students of Greek of all ages. I can't wait to see what the rest of the series will bring. I recommend this to anyone who loves my country and would like to learn a bit of Greek without worrying about its (admittedly) painfully difficult grammar! (I received a free copy of the book in return for my honest review.)"