Beginner's Kana Workbook

This book was one of the first books i bought on Japanese script, and regretfully one of my worst purchases. The book doesn't go into much detail and the material just seemed to be geared towards kindergarteners.
1. The first half of the book: tracing all the kana.
For the writting practices all you have to do is trace the dotted (well, grayed-in) lines; it may seem nice, but it's not very helpful for learning and remembering them. Think about it, when you're learning to draw, what's more helpful? tracing things over and over, or looking at an image and trying to recreate it on your own? the first method is merely mindless repetition while the second uses active learning which involves more of your brain to learn the characters.
2.The second half of the book: words and pictures.
Another thing makes you feel like a two year practicing with this book is the pitures used. After introducing the characters, there's a section that uses large childish pictures next to large squares to copy the characters. It's not very economical, though, there may be 40 some pages here, but each page only has 2 to 4 words on it (all nouns and verbs in random order). It's not really worth learning though since if you continue learning Japanese, you'll replace the kana used for the words for the kanji.
---Overall, I think the book would be good to use for a first grade classroom (although not all of it, i don't think six year olds need to learn the japanese words for "cocktail", "ashtray", or "cigarette lighter" Which are scattered randomly in the book), but if you're over the age of 10, look for a better book.

The first step to learning Japanese is to learn kana, both hiragana and katakana. It is just like learning the Alphabet. The more difficult Kanji comes only after mastering the two basic writing systems. All quality Japanese books will use a kana base, rather than a romaji (English writing of Japanese) base.

Kana learning is incredibly simple, and is basically learning the strokes, then getting a good workbook for practice. I found the "Beginner's Kana Workbook" to be an excellent tool in kana acquisition, with appropriate exercises for both writing forms. Also, hiragana and katakana are combined in one book, as they should be, for a good price.

The beginner's kana workbook is clear and neat and it gives the right order for the pen strokes to be done. It also has an appealing global approach to kana and includes a final section of useful ready-to-use sentences that help get started with Japanese reading.
Nevertheless it lacks of more explanations about handwritten Japanese and about the commonest variations (e.g. for the "sa" sound). The hirigana way of writing of some basic greetings words that people mostly read in the romanji form of writing are also missed.

The beginner's kana workbook is clear and neat and it gives the right order for the pen strokes to be done. It also has an appealing global approach to kana and includes a final section of useful ready-to-use sentences that help get started with Japanese reading.
Nevertheless it lacks of more explanations about handwritten Japanese and about the commonest variations (e.g. for the "sa" sound). The hirigana way of writing of some basic greetings words that people mostly read in the romanji form of writing are also missed.

Make no mistake, this book has one purpose and one purpose only: to show you how to write the japanese characters within hiragana and katakana. It has ample space to practise, and explains in what order the strokes should be for proper writing.
I found it refreshing to use to remember what each character actually means and would recommend it as a good supplement aid to any japanese language course. (personal or class)