Learning Chinese Characters by Alison Matthews, Laurence Matthews (2007, Paperback)

One of the hard things about Mandarin is remembering the tone of the words. There are four tones - high, rising, falling/rising, and falling. The characters are either building block characters or formed out of two (and rarely three) building block. E.g., the character for good is comprised of the symbol for woman and child and it has a falling/rising tone.

The book has a "dorky" story about each character that help you remember the constituent building blocks which has one of 4 prototype characters woven into the story depending on the tone. Thus, if I am trying to remember the character for lamp, there is story about a giant (which signifies first tone) and fire and nail (the two constituent buiding blocks) plus a sound word which helps to jog the memory.

As someone who went through medical school, I appreciate good mnemonics. This is an excellent book. If you want to learn the hanzi (Chinese characters), just get this book! It teaches the 800 most common characters. But also, it teaches a method to learn even more. When I see a character now, I start making up my own stories following the pattern of the book.