I purchased a book titled The First Thousand Words in Russian to help me learn Russian in 2000. It is organized in an interesting manner. For example page 6 and 7 is a colorful picture of a kitchen. The picture is full of humor. Son number one has a pot on his head. Son number two just broke a dish. The trash can is overflowing. Dad seems to be washing dishes. One daughter is feeding bread to the dog. The cat is on the top of the cabinets knocking over a container. Mom can be seen through the kitchen window. She is outside hanging up laundry to dry.


And in the border around this main picture are individual pictures of items like forks. The Russian name in Cyrillic and Latin is under these individial pictures. The picture above is an example of this. I didn't have time to scan a picture from the book, so I borrowed a picture of forks.


The book's pictures are like a comic book in terms of art work and humor. If you read the book reviews on Amazon.com for this book, most people dislike it because it doesn't show the stresses for pronunciation. And I did notice this issue too because I was trying to learn Russian from it.


I don't recommend it if you are trying to learn Russian. But I greatly recommend the book if you are dealing with a Russian speaking child. I took it with me to Ukraine and found it very useful for communicating with my daughter. Natasha's favorite pages at first were the grocery store and food pages. And she loved finding the duck. Each page has a duck hidden on it.


In many ways I used it like the Kwik Point Cards. Next time I travel to Ukraine I will be taking the Point Cards too.


For the first year that Natasha was home, this book was her main bedtime story book. Natasha would pick a page and we would talk about it. And because the words had Latin spellings, I could follow along (except for when Natasha used Ukrainian words).


Natasha and I used it so much that we destroyed the book's spine with just opening and closing. She won't let me throw the book away even through it is falling apart.


I have heard that is is very useful for children who can read Russian. Again, it is a simple book with colorful pictures that doesn't intimidate. And it has a Russian to English dictionary in the back of the book.