Books Italian in 10 Minutes a Day® (10 Minutes a Day Series)
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Rating: - Easy Italian for any age.....
Highly Recommend this book and audio for beginners and intermediate Italian. My family is taking an Italian Class and the Professor uses this book!
Easy to follow and even if you are not taking Italian classes I recommend purchasing this book.

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Rating: - Cute.
Cute describes these books in the 10-mintues-a-day series. Pleasant, a little fun, a little insipid. But, really, not so bad just to get a taste of the language before you decide to move on to deeper study.

Actually--in contrast to more than one other reviewer--I found the word-substitution presentation to be quite helpful in anchoring the meaning of the word into my memory. This is not an untried method, being also used in the EasyLearn Language audio programs, and other texts.

Those word stickers don't stay on too long, though. Be prepared to lose a lot of them.

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Rating: - Very Useful
This book really came in handy on our trip. The menu cut out cards and the flash cards proved to be very valuable to us, especially since a friend gave us the bad advice that everyone spoke some English. Don't believe that, there were a number of people that did speak some amount of English but we both wished that we had taken more time before our trip to learn a littlem ore of the language.

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Rating: - Italian in 10 Minutes a Day
My wife and I have now spent a good month "learning" with
this book. In fact more than 10 minutes a day,
more like 30 minutes per session.
We both speak other languages, so we can compare.

GOOD, nice thematic picture groups,
and you need to learn the words associated with them.
(We did.)

BAD, again, and again Ms. Kershul introduces words,
and grammar which do not fit into the "just mastered"
scheme of things.

IRRITATING to the extreme:
Ms. Kershul gives her instructions in a mixture of English
and Italian in one sentence.
(We would have preferred one line of Italian ONLY,
followed by one line --say in italics--
providing the English translation, in many cases preferably,
with an explanations "how this compares to what was done yesterday".)

BAD:
In attempt to NOT introduce grammar, you are left high
and dry figuring out gender, declinations, and worse
conjugations by yourself.
(We have not yet seen satisfactory forms summarizing 'things',
and we are half way through the book).

In anger, we finally went to the local library
and got a 70 years old Italian grammar for High Schools.
That did solve our problem and left us convinced
that "new and improved" does not necessarily
provide a better learning experience.

Somewhat IRRITATING:
Ms Kershuls's choice of vocabulary seems to assume that
1. you wish to visit lots of relatives
(not an uncle, niece, grandson, cousin, grandparent, or daughter
is forgotten in the family tree),
2. you wish to order meals and "buy stuff" constantly
(we assure you, that is the one thing Italians
are very good at, understanding English when you want to
buy things or order a meal)
3. you wish to tell Italians that you are "American"
(as if our accents and clothing are not dead-give-aways)
4. you pray "catholic", "protestant", or "Hebrew".
(the Italians we know couldn't care less
-- how about instead "politics", "music", "movies", "soccer"
and the "bella ragazza" over there)

In summary, we are ready now to look for a book which
does not claim to be "easy, in 10 minutes a day",
but emphasizes grammar,
groups vocabulary (and discusses alternatives for each new
word),
provides clearer indication of emphasis in the pronounciation
(example: telEfono, versus incorrect tElefono)
Teaches Italian as a language of "constructed" full sentences, rather than "single catch words".
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Our final test,
No, we would not recommend this book to a friend.