E-Teacher Talking Chinese Audiobook: The Six Swans

This E-Teacher Talking Chinese audiobook is specially made to be compatible with E-Teacher Talking Pen, a pen-shaped book reader onto which audio from specific books can be downloaded.

When E-Teacher Talking Pen scans across book pages, either images or texts, the corresponding Chinese words, phrases, paragraphs, or dialogues are read out loudly in clear Mandarin, a new technique of Point and Read. Please see E-reading pen: an interactive tool to learn Chinese for more details.

The Six Swans is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. Six brothers have been turned into swans by their evil stepmother. They can only take their human forms for fifteen minutes every evening. In order to free them, their sister must make six shirts out of starwort for her brothers, and neither speak nor laugh for six years.

A king finds her doing this, is taken by her beauty and marries her. When the Queen has given birth to their first child, the King's wicked mother takes away the child and accuses the Queen, and again with the second and the third.

The third time, the Queen is sentenced to be burned at the stake. On the day of her execution, she has all but finished making the shirts for her brothers; only the last shirt misses a left arm. When she is brought to the stake she takes the shirts with her, and when she is about to be burned, the six years expire and six swans come flying through the air.

She throws the shirts over her brothers and they regain their human form, except for the youngest brother, who is left with a swan's wing instead of a left arm (in some versions she does not finish the sixth shirt in time, and the youngest brother is left as a swan.) The Queen, now free to speak, can defend herself against the accusations. Her mother-in-law is burned at the stake instead. And the king, queen, and her six brothers live happily ever after.

Now your child can enjoy this timeless classic tale in Chinese. Each page contains charming, colorful cartoon illustrations, the Chinese characters and the Pinyin (phonetic transcriptions). You can upload the audio file of this book into your E-Teacher Talking Pen. You can download it from here.