Ellie’s Secret Diary

Ellie’s Secret Diary is a bilingual English-Vietnamese children’s book (ages 9 to 14) told as a diary. It follows Ellie as she deals with a bully at school and finally opens up to her family.

You get the full story in both languages, which makes it useful if you’re raising a bilingual child, supporting a heritage learner, or you want an easier way into Vietnamese reading with English right there for support. It’s also designed as a PSHE style resource, so the topic is more “real life” than many picture books.

It works best for reading practice and discussion, not structured language study. There are no lessons or step by step progression, so complete beginners may still lean heavily on the English. If you want audio, some softback dual language editions can be used with Mantra Lingua’s TalkingPEN, and there’s also an eBook version with narration and extra activities sold separately on Mantra Lingua’s site.