Awful Library Books

50 Useful English Dialogues For You and Your Friends
Kuznetsova
2007

Submitter: While weeding in the children’s world languages section of our public library, this book caught my attention because of the mild condition issues and the chicken on the cover who likes to dance.  There are many things rather awful about this book: The uninspiring line illustrations (the awesome chicken is false advertising), the fact that it teaches British English and our library is in the U.S., standard phrasebook quirkiness, and the strange premise of Russian and English children vacationing in Madrid together apparently without any adult supervision.  These could all be overcome if the book was moderately useful for learning English.

Unfortunately, it is full of strangely translated phrases including:
“This is my player.  I like to listen to the music.”
“Chicken or meat?”
“I want to become brown.”

Holly: “I want to become brown”? I guess that means that while vacationing in Madrid one might want to get a tan. They sure use a lot of exclamation points, too. I agree with submitter on all counts.