Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but fuzzy in present-day accuracy
Review: It's cool in concept. 214 characters, many of which are the basis of the characters used in Chinese and Japanese; however, some of the excusion is a bit off. It is well organized, by types of items and does capture the fact that each elementary element is used in combination with others in creating more complex words. It's also very good in showing that nearly all the pictographs are grounded in something real or combinations thereof. The main meanings are fairly clear in English.The problems include a) the 'pronounciations' in 'Chinese' aren't standardized or explicitly stated as to which dialect they are and since Chinese dialects are pronounced entirely differently it's nigh on useless, b) there is no source for where the heck he got the 'evolutionary' pictographs or if they're anything other than what's in his own head, c) some of the meanings he attributes to some phrases are just right off and, finally, an aesthetic nit d) the characters are written square-on rather than with any graceful posture. If you copied these characters and showed them to a Chinese calligrapher, they'd state that you must have learned them from a Westerner.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun,exciting,and very interesting
Review: This book is fun. I love the step by step attention I get from each page and character. I loved writing the pretty characters and hanging them on my wall to admire. When ever I look at the pictures on my wall I know I could have never learned to write them by myself without help from this great book.
Rating: 
Summary: A fairly good introduction to the Chinese writing system.
Review: This is a fairly good introduction to the Chinese writing system providing insight into its origins and current use. While the calligraphic representations of the modern forms of the characters may be somewhat off, much of the background information is fine. The romanisation system is the officially recognised pinyin romanisation scheme developed by Russian and Chinese linguists during the 1930s and updated in the 1950s; it is generally employed in the transliteration of Standard Chinese into Latin letters. There is no need to worry over what 'dialect' the transliterations belong to because the vast majority of any given publication concerning China and the Chinese language will be in Standard Chinese, the national normative based on Northern Chinese. There are seven to eight Chinese languages with a myriad of dialects each, and it would be illogical to favour the others over the national standard. With regards to the evolution of characters, the sources from which the author bases the evolution is explained in the background information towards the front. I would recommend this as a wonderful coffeetable book, art book, and general introduction to the Chinese writing system, but not as an ultimate foundation in learning the Chinese script. If one is seriously interested in learning good handwriting, I recommend Johan Bjorksten's «Learn to write Chinese characters» from the Yale Language Series. It's inexpensive and perhaps even more useful than the volume on sale here. Both books use pinyin romanised Standard Chinese -- and usually with the tones noted, too! Most books, unfortunately, tend to leave them out. Bjorksten's work should be used as a supplement to a full on course in Standard Chinese (biaozhun hanyu... or, as many may say, putonghua); however, it can stand alone for those who are simply curious about the writing system itself and would like an appliable introduction.
Rating:
Summary: A Better Book, the More You Know
Review: This is an interesting, although a very basic book about CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY: FROM PICTOGRAPH TO IDEOGRAM, by Eduardo Fazzioli. The previous reviewer may not realize that the pictograms of Chinese characters are in common use today, and are called Seal Script. The illustrations may be a bit fanciful, but do contain more than a seed of the origins. As a student of both Chinese painting and calligraphy, I have spent a great deal of my time practicing a character in a nine-square grid in order to get the spacing and composition of the character correct, just as children in China do every day. Only then is it permitted to be more "artistic" with my calligraphy.
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