About us

Hello! I'm Robin. When I began my maternity leave after the birth of my first child, I decided to use the time to bond with my baby but also complete a passion project of my own. As the daughter of Chinese and German immigrants, I knew that I wanted to preserve our family heritage by ensuring that my son learned Mandarin as I did when I was young. Searching the internet for bilingual books led me to much disappointment in the limited options available for people like me who needed audio files or Pinyin to read the Chinese characters. After buying all the suitable bilingual books on Amazon I decided to cook up another plan.

I began with the initial idea of a children's book, then hired my cousin for graphics, and single-handedly coordinated the execution of the books from gaining licenses, registering a business, and executing my idea. Since my son was still young at the time and needed high contrast books, I came up with the idea of Hearing and Seeing Chinese,  a pictographic book that illustrates common nature characters for easy memorization and association.

As I got used to the process of making a book and became more interested in Montessori pedagogy, I came up with another idea of using real images to teach one of my favorite pastimes – cooking.  I Can Make a Salad and I Can Make a Fruit Tart are two bilingual cookbooks for aspiring chefs that were a result of combining my interests in Mandarin, Montessori, and cooking. 

Now that I had 3 books designed, I dreamed of printing them. In order to raise some initial capital, during the summer of 2021, I launched a Kickstarter campaign. The purpose of doing an initial round of crowdfunding was to garner awareness and funds to pay the book printer. By the end of the campaign, we raised almost $6,000, equating to ~20% more than my requested amount!

Fast forward to today, we are actively selling our books through our website and on Amazon. We believe in our mission and know that young readers will thrive linguistically as soon as they learn about our bilingual content.