My Teacher is a Martian: Mandarin Companion Graded Readers Breakthrough Level

Breakthrough level

by Jared Turner, John Pasden, Shishuang Chen (Editor)

Two students are fascinated by outer space, but when their new teacher seems to know more about Mars than anyone could possibly know, they start to suspect that something is unusual. As they encounter inexplicable events, they become convinced their teacher is actually from Mars. How can they prove it and who will believe them? They may be the only ones who can discover the truth!

Mandarin Companion is a series of easy-to-read novels in Chinese that are fun to read and proven to accelerate language learning. Every book in the Mandarin Companion series is carefully written to use characters, words, and grammar that a learner is likely to know.
The Breakthrough Level is written using only 150 unique Chinese characters and is intended for Chinese learners who have obtained a low elementary or novice level of Chinese. Most learners will be able to approach this book after one year of traditional formal study, depending on the learner and program. This level is designed to help learners begin to read full length texts in Chinese and combines simplicity of characters with an easy-to-understand storyline that helps beginners grow their vocabulary and language comprehension abilities.

Genres: China, Childrens

75 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

To my surprise, I was ready to read my first graded reader 😃. I appreciate the care/quality that went into producing this book + the illustrations. It feels nostalgic, somehow.

The back of the book said "most learners will be able to approach this book after one year of traditional formal study," and though it also added, "depending on the learner and program," I took that one year mark seriously until someone at my similar level on Discord said they were able to breeze through these without a problem. I didn't have the same breeze, since these 46 pages still took me 4.5 hours (equivalent to how long I take with a short novel), but it wasn't painful at all. I have spent 136 hours so far on active immersion + study (not including passive + misc. stuff here).

It was interesting and funny to find words I thought I recognized but actually confused without knowing, like:
* 今年 (this year) is not 会车 (can car)
* 知 (know) is not 和 (and, with)
* 听 (listen, hear) is not 叫 (call [name])
* 对 (right) is not 过 (go, pass)

I also purchased the audiobook and was looking forward to listening to it passively after reading this actively, but I'm really disappointed the narration sounds like it was done by a machine, with no variation in expression or anything, so we also don't get a sense of what it sounds like to hear someone read a story aloud. Too bad.

[Jaap Grolleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mandarin Companion is this brand that I knew from posting silly memes about Chinese learning on Facebook — and I didn’t think they would have created such fantastic books. Not only are the Chinese characters, all together, at the right difficulty level, the story is also such a relief compared to usual materials. There’s no pedantic story (学习努力，不要放弃！）, but instead a fun story (as fun as the simple language level allows), and it’s pretty long too. It’s the first time I read something over forty pages in Chinese, which heralds a milestone in my Chinese learning and makes me proud.

Two remarks; Some of the visual editing is poor, for instance, five Hanzi characters on one page, all by their own. And Bruce Coville should have been credited by name as this story is obviously inspired from ‘My teacher is an alien’.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad I found these books! They are great. I was finally able to make it through this one and get the jist of the story, which I'm pretty proud of. I have another one that's a level 1 but I may need to work through another breakthrough level first. :) Definitely recommend these for anyone learning Chinese!

[Maria Catarina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t believe I have finished my first book in Chinese!!!!
This is perfect for anyone with 1 to 2 years of Chinese studying. Easy enough that it doesn’t get frustrating but hard enough that you can’t just read it all at first try. I feel like these 150 characters really stuck on my mind. Thank you to the minds behind this :)

[G · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fun to read and the evidence of how well it's put together for beginning learners that I'm pondering the plot rather than mired in looking up specific characters, BUT the ending mystified me a bit. Are 水老师 and 车老师 the same person? (They seem to be the same age and look almost identical except for grown out hair.) Is the notebook blank because it's some kind of Martian magic? Does the teacher speak a different language? Where is he actually from? Or did he swap it out and give them a blank notebook and the "it will be in the future" is just a reference to them being so obsessed with aliens and space that they, like their two (?) teachers and dad, are going to someday be writing sci fi themselves? And where does he actually go at night when he disappears? Was it invisible ink and him deliberately disappearing in a year-long effort to massively troll his students? Did I miss an explanation?

I think I might be reading too much into a ~60 page graded reader, but I don't know, I have questions.

[Clifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although my knowledge of Chinese is more advanced than required for this book, I don't do a lot of reading in Chinese and decided it would be good practice. I've read another of the books in the "breakthrough" level of the Mandarin Companion series and most of one in Level 2, so I think I'll move on to Level 1 before resuming work on the Level 2 books. This story is fun--two young students become interested in the stars and jump to the conclusion that their teacher is from Mars, so they set about trying to learn the truth. Given that only 150 characters are used, there is a lot of repetition, which can be a little tedious. For example, the two kids have names made up of three characters, and after a while I ignored the names because they were used in full many times in each paragraph. Good practice, I suppose, for learning to read a little faster.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story feels like it should be in a book that you find in your grandparents' bookcase. Like it should have yellowed pages, a worn paperback cover, and that old book smell. The story's kinda cozy and has a nice vintage vibe - especially considering that this book is only at the breakthrough level. This is my third breakthrough level book, so I didn't learn as much from this one as I had with my first two, but I still learned some new things. And I noticed that my Chinese reading comprehension and speed had improved once again!

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This delivered exactly what I wanted - an engaging story with enough characters I knew so as not to be intimidating, and enough new vocabulary - both a few new characters but also familiar characters combined to form new words and phrases - to stretch. Looking forward to reading more in this series.

[Cosmos Candies · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good starter book. The story is interesting enough to keep reading and the vocab isn't too difficult. I have been studying for 4 months and i was able to read this without having to look up words very often (especially bc they often repeat). i did struggle with understanding a couple sentences despite knowing the characters.

[Tiff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for struggling Chinese readers, like I am! Mandarin Companions make an easy read to build your confidence. Highly recommended. Story is very amusing and keeps readers' interest and you will have finished the story before you know it!

[Michael Hester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simple, accessible, and I come away having significantly strengthened what I already know but with more context. Can’t wait to read another MC book.

[Aubrey Stapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

非常好玩，非常有帮助

[Pris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fun- thought I think I should move up. The text is easy to follow; the syntax isn't hard.

[Silvia Luoni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve loved this book so much and it’s a great help to improve my Chinese. I’m going to read more books in this series for sure!

[Nathan Allen-Zimmerer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book, well written in contrast to other stories I’ve tried. The author intentionally seems to challenge the reader in a way that promotes a better understanding of characters or phrases.

[Rowan Gleser · Rating 5 out of 5]

yes i’m counting this bc it took me awhile also it was kind of insane lmao but did wonders for my vocabulary

[dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

wtf

[Ca Quang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this, and the ending was especially interesting. I didn’t quite understand the meaning of '以后会有的' from 水老师 though.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I oddly have a harder time understanding the breakthrough level books than Level 1 or 2.

Popsugar reading challenge 2024: A book set in space (read in 2025)

[John Osborne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kept me entertained enough considering it is only a 150 character book. Really am enjoying this series. Two more breakthrough level readers to go and then onto level 1.

[Fips · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice confidence booster, but what the 會! Why did I buy the traditional Chinese version?!