I am currently reading Alice in Wonderland. I think that the bilingual format is very helpful and convenient for learning Russian. I also just finished Tom Sawyer and found that language teaching approach not as convenient as the bilingual approach used in Alice in Wonderland. I am looking forward to using the bilingual approach in other stories. Thank you for making them available.

I really enjoyed the story. Some of the words were difficult for me, but it made me work harder to get the pronunciation better. It’s a familiar story, so that helps. One thing I really like in all the learning materials Kristina presents is that she includes stresses in the words. That is a huge help to me when it comes to learning the language. As I said, it was a bit of a struggle for me to read, but that just makes me work harder.

I’m still pretty much a newbie when it comes to Russian so I don’t really think my review will be of much use to anyone. Anyway, I was really eager to practice what little I had learnt. So eager, in fact, I even ordered a couple books I’d already read before off of Amazon. But I began having second thoughts: I used to read lots of books written in English, back when I was still learning the language. And though I learned much in relatively little time, it took me years to correct one huge oversight: I barely practiced my listening skills during that time. Years passed before I became courageous enough to speak the language around natives. And once I realized I was about to make the same mistake, again, I began looking for material that included both text and audio. And here we are. I liked the book. Easy enough not to make it torturous and challenging enough not to make it a chore. And the fact that I get a native-speaker to read the story out loud to me is invaluable. It’s still too early to tell but I feel like I’ve already improved my listening skills.

This book is excellent. The adaptation is clever, the translation is clear, and the formatting helps. Words also show which syllable needs to be stressed. I can’t find any way to improve it; it is honestly an excellent resource for any Russian language learner.

Your presentation of Alice in Wonderland not only reminded me of Carrol’s most loved tale but also gave an additional boost to my Russian learning experience. I would recommend your classes to anyone who is trying to grapple with the Russian language. I find your lessons and other teaching material to be of great assistance.

I love the book! Alice in Wonderland is a famous English classic for younger readers (young at heart as well as young in years) – and you captured the spirit of the original in your simplified translation. Your translation is challenging for me (at my level) – but not so much so that it’s discouraging. And the way you repeat the “new” (for me) Russian words is VERY helpful. We made a CD so we can play it in the car; and even my husband (who is not a linguist) noticed the repeated words and asked me what some of them meant. I need to see and hear a new word many times before I can learn it. Your reading speed is not so fast that we are able to distinguish individual words when we hear you speak them. I can’t understand Russian when it is spoken at the normal rapid-fire rate – but your reading is slow enough that I can separate out the individual words. I highly recommend this book!

My daughter and I love Alice in Wonderland. The side-by-side translations are great and we often listen to the audio version in the car. It has helped us improve vocabulary, understanding of the cases, and comprehension. We are both at a lower intermediate level of Russian. I have recommended it to others.