Ethelyn Simon

Very good primer to get one started in reading Hebrew. This made it easy for me to former the sounds of words and letters I saw while in Israel a couple weeks back. My only complaint is that it lacks English phonetic transliterations in the text (I keep having to refer to the back flap).

Not my favorite. For my taste it leans WAY too much on English words spelled out in Hebrew letters. I also found reading line after line of untranslated Hebrew words very frustrating. But it was good for additional practice with letter recognition; you can never have too much of that, so 3 stars for "liked it".

So far I really enjoy learning Hebrew from this book. It gets you reading Hebrew early in Chapter 4. The first three chapters are mostly alphabet review. It has oral/written exercises and you can also purchase the biblical flashcards and the answer key to the exercises. Yes, I would recommend either getting the answer key or having a Hebrew teacher, just in case. :)

Definitely something that will help if you are using the textbook!