Children's Books discussion

In November 2014, we will explore picture books with stories featuring dual/multi language stories. This is the place to discuss books fitting this theme that were not part of our "official five" group reads (which can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...)

One thing to consider is that dual language picture books will often be longer than what we consider a standard picture book.

Prietita and the Ghost Woman/Prietita y la llorona (6+)

My Papa Diego and Me/Mi papa Diego y yo: Memories of My Father and His Art/Recuerdos de mi padre y su arte (6+)

Magda's Tortillas / Las Tortillas de Magda (5+)

Animal Poems of the Iguazu/Animalario del Iguazu (6+)

The Story of Colors/La Historia de los Colores: A Bilingual Folktale from the Jungles of Chiapas (9+)

El Gusto del Mercado Mexicano/A Taste of the Mexican Market (4+)

¡Sí, Se Puede! / Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A. (5+)

I Love Saturdays y Domingos (5+)

Papa and Me (3+)

Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet In Spanish And English (4+)

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá (6+)

The Secret of Your Name: Proud to Be Métis (10+)

Lii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer: L'alfabet di Michif / Owls See Clearly at Night: A Michif Alphabet (4+)

Niwechihaw / I Help (2+)

Fox on the Ice (4+)

Caribou Song: Atihko Nikamon (7+)

Sora and the Cloud (3+)

Great list, Gundula!

Gundula wrote: "One thing to consider is that dual language picture books will often be longer than what we consider a standard picture book."

Do you mean page count or length of story? Either is fine though I would still like to be sure we have some offerings for the younger PB crowd.

Thanks for the list! :-)

Kathryn wrote: "Gundula wrote: "One thing to consider is that dual language picture books will often be longer than what we consider a standard picture book."

Do you mean page count or length of story? Either is ..."

Mostly page count can be a bit longer, especially if the text is parallel. Quite a few of my selections are for the younger PB crowd (I forgot to add age suggestions last night and will edit this now).

Great, and no worries. Thanks, Gundula!

Max: A Griggstown Mystery = Un Mystere de Griggstown looks adorable but I doubt I will be able to secure a copy.

I also wanted to nominate I Love Saturdays y Domingos -- it's wonderful.

Here are a few others:

A Nest in Springtime: A Mandarin Chinese-English bilingual book of numbers (board book)

Summertime Rainbow: A Mandarin Chinese-English bilingual book of colors (board book)

Tito Puente, Mambo King/Tito Puente, Rey del Mambo

And

Le Lion Et La Souris - The Lion and the Mouse

The Little Mermaid/La Sirenita

Siesta

here are a few:

Water Rolls, Water Rises: El agua rueda, el agua sube (English/Spanish - this one was just published and my library doesn't have it yet, but it looks wonderful)

Miki Mongoose: A Great Adventure (English/Japanese - we read this book to our girls to help teach them about Okinawa, where they were born; probably pretty hard to find in the U.S.)

Shisa (English/Japanese - ditto from the Miki Mongoose book)

Can You Say Peace? (not truly bi/multi lingual, so perhaps it doesn't belong on this list. But I like that it is a simple book that helps to teach the word peace in different languages)

Here are some English/Spanish books that we have read:
Señor Pancho Had a Rancho. This one isn't truly dual language...it is written in English with many Spanish words mixed in.

Me Llamo Gabriela/my Name Is Gabriela: La Vida de Gabriela Mistral / The Life of Gabriela Mistral

El Arbol De Navidad

Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx/La juez que creció en el Bronx

From the Bellybutton of the Moon/Del ombligo de la luna: And Other Summer Poems/Y otros poemas de verano

Iguanas in the Snow/Iguanas en la nieve: And Other Winter Poems/Y otros poemas de invierno
Laughing Tomatoes/Jitomates risuenos: And Other Spring Poems/Y otros poemas de primavera

Hello Ocean / Hola Mar. (This book has been read by the picture book club before).

La Casa Adormecida. (The Napping House)
Growing Vegetable Soup my library has Growing Vegetable soup with both languages...Spanish title is A Sembrar sopa de verduras

Goodnight Moon 123: A Counting Book/Buenas Noches Luna 123
Uno, Dos, Tres, Posada!

(I am happy to read books that aren't English/Spanish....but my children are in a dual immersion program that is English/Spanish...so those are the books I am familiar with.)

Jenny wrote: "(I am happy to read books that aren't English/Spanish....but my children are in a dual immersion program that is English/Spanish...so those are the books I am familiar with.) "

Thanks for the nominations, Jenny (and Dolly and Gundula). Most of the dual language books at my library are English/Spanish but I, too, am interested to read others, too.

It is now time to VOTE for the five books you would like to read with the group in November. Please choose from our official nominations (messages 3-11) and post your choices in a comment below.

Votes will be accepted until October 19th. Thank you!

Here are my five votes (hard to choose)

Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet In Spanish And English

I Love Saturdays y Domingos

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá

Niwechihaw / I Help

The Secret of Your Name: Proud to Be Métis

I can vouch for the wonderfulness of the seasonal books of poetry by Francisco X. Alarcón, but since I've already read them, I won't vote for them.

Unfortunately my system doesn't have any of the non-Spanish titles already nominated. So, here are the ones I am likely to be able to get and am most interested in:

My Papa Diego and Me/Mi papa Diego y yo: Memories of My Father and His Art/Recuerdos de mi padre y su arte

El gusto del mercado mexicano / A Taste of the Mexican Market

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá

Me Llamo Gabriela/my Name Is Gabriela: La Vida de Gabriela Mistral / The Life of Gabriela Mistral

(While I would love to read several of the books Gundula recommended that are in other languages, my library system has only a few Chinese-English and a large selection of Spanish-English. Wish we had a better selection of other languages.)

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá

Water Rolls, Water Rises: El agua rueda, el agua sube

Summertime Rainbow: A Mandarin Chinese-English bilingual book of colors

My Papa Diego and Me/Mi papa Diego y yo: Memories of My Father and His Art/Recuerdos de mi padre y su arte

I Love Saturdays y Domingos

My votes:

I had a hard time picking these, since I wanted to pick at least one or two of the nominated books in a language other than Spanish. But my library doesn't carry them - so I may have to purchase them.

From the Bellybutton of the Moon/Del ombligo de la luna: And Other Summer Poems/Y otros poemas de verano

The Story of Colors/La Historia de los Colores: A Bilingual Folktale from the Jungles of Chiapas

Max: A Griggstown Mystery = Un Mystere de Griggstown

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá

Water Rolls, Water Rises: El agua rueda, el agua sube

(I did not find Lii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer: L'alfabet di Michif / Owls See Clearly at Night: A Michif Alphabet at my library, but they did have Wild Berries, also written by Julie Flett. It's also in English and Cree, so I put it on hold. It's too bad I didn't find it in time to nominate it...)

Please note:

While we liked reading I Love Saturdays y Domingos, it was one of the books we selected for the September 2011 - Grandparents discussion, so I recommend that we do not pick it again.

Dolly wrote: "While we liked reading I Love Saturdays y Domingos, it was one of the books we selected for the September 2011 - Grandparents discussion, so I recommend that we do not pick it again. "

Good point, Dolly. However, since we have had new members join since then, and since it did receive a few votes (and so few of the titles this month did so) I'm going to include it.

This was a difficult month! It seems that many of our libraries do not have robust non-English picture book collections, and that our libraries each have different offerings! Also, that the vast majority are Spanish language (apologies to those who were hoping for a broad spectrum of languages (I know I was) but we have to go with what our libraries have available...) I have ensured that at least one book has been selected from each of your lists, and hope that those members who did not vote will be able to find some of them, as well.

Here we go:

I Love Saturdays y Domingos

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá

My Papa Diego and Me/Mi papa Diego y yo: Memories of My Father and His Art/Recuerdos de mi padre y su arte

Water Rolls, Water Rises: El agua rueda, el agua sube

Summertime Rainbow: A Mandarin Chinese-English bilingual book of colors

No clear sixth/alternate this month, but of course members are always welcome to read more and post your thoughts in this Master List and General Discussion thread. Thank you!

I just discovered Here Comes the Cat! which is apparently bilingual -- Russian! My library system has a copy in Elko but they're not willing to loan it out.

Two more aboriginal themed dual language picture books from Canada, in English and Inuktitut (these look wonderful, but unless you known not only Inuktitut but also Inuktitut script, you will not be able to even guess at the Inuktitut text, I wish the author had supplied a list of corresponding Latin lettering)

Uumajut: Learn About Arctic Wildlife!
Uumajut Volume 2: Learn More About Arctic Wildlife

The information present is informative and the illustrations are lovely, but since these books also celebrate Inuit culture, how Arctic wildlife feeds and sustains the Inuit is also mentioned and described (very important, but sensitive children or vegetarians/vegans might have some issues with the text)

Oh neat... at least the reader can see just how different languages can be.

Cheryl wrote: "Oh neat... at least the reader can see just how different languages can be."

It is neat, and I have just printed out some wikipedia information on the Inuktitut script, which was actually invented in the 1800s by a British missionary and is supposedly somewhat based on East Indian scripts. I am going to actually try to figure out the latin wording for the Inuktitut (but I might be overly optimist about this). I don't know the script, but some of the wikipedia info has the script and corresponding Latin letters.

Those sound wonderful. I wish either of the library systems I have available had a wider selection of dual language books other than English/Spanish. My husband has been studying Portuguese and could only find a couple of books available in the library system, no childrens books...which is unfortunate...because there is a small population of people from Brazil in our city...and at least two or three schools that have a dual immersion program that is Portuguese in the city. We also have several Chinese dual immersion programs. I am sure the schools have books but it is unfortunate that the libraries don't have more books to supplement what is being learned at school. Maybe in time they will... The dual immersion programs are still pretty new other than Spanish. But I know it has been a big blessing that so many books are available for my children either in Spanish or English/Spanish.

Please do share back about the books you read, Gundula.

I read Animal Poems of the Iguazu/Animalario del Iguazu with my children. Here is my review: I read the English poems aloud and had my children take turns reading the Spanish poems. While the English poems are good, the poems sound more beautiful in Spanish, in my opinion. The poems introduce animals and plants of the Iguazu Waterfalls in Argentina as well as a few of the beliefs of the Guarani people that reside there.

Some of the poems are simple but clever..

Toucan
For a beak
I have two
papaya slices


Others are longer and range from humorous to meditative. But imbedded in many are gentle (or not so gentle reminders) that we have a responsibility to care for these plants and animals and for the world around us. I like this one:

Giant Ants
From our perch
We ants can spot
Many people

Walking in file
Like giant ants
On steel pathways

Holding digital cameras
Taking lots of photos
Of each other

Ignoring the great
And tiny wonders
All around them.

Oh, wonderful, thank you for letting us know about this!

Just in time for this month's discussion - I attended a women veterens career development forum yesterday. In our goodie bags, we received the spanish/english picture book Good Night Captain Mama: Buenas Noches Capitan Mama by Graciela Tiscareno-Sato and illustrated by Linda Lens.

The book details the interaction between a young boy, Marco, who is getting ready for bed and his mama, who is getting ready to go out and fly a night air refueling sortie as an Air Force Navigator.

I was so excited to see this book since I have so much in common with the story. I attended the forum with a friend and we were both thrilled to meet the author and talk about our experiences in the Air Force as aviators. The book is meant for the 3-8 age range, which is just a bit young for our girls, but we still really enjoyed reading the story together.

Sounds wonderful...perfect for this theme...and for Veterans Day. I have added it to my to read list. Thanks!!

Thanks, Dolly, Jenny and Gundula for these excellent additions to our Master List!

Here are my reviews for bilingual English-Spanish titles my children and I have read. They are all listed above but perhaps my reviews may be helpful for others.

El Arbol De Navidad. A cumulative story/poem about a family decorating a tree. I appreciated the author's note about different Hispanic holiday celebrations.

Me Llamo Gabriela/my Name Is Gabriela: La Vida de Gabriela Mistral / The Life of Gabriela Mistral.
A nice bilingual picture book biography about Gabriela Mistral. She was born in Chile and grew up to become a writer, poet and teacher. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was the first Latin American writer to receive this prize. The book uses colorful language and beautiful illustrations to tell Mistral's story.

Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx/La juez que crecio en el Bronx. I appreciate that this is a bilingual book, particularly since Sotomayor is of Puerto Rican descent. Sotomayor did not have an easy life, but due to the dedication of her mother and her own hard work and determination, she has led a very successful life. I like how the author compares her to a blossoming flower. Great illustrations. I think I will use this in future biography units. It is about a contemporary figure, and it is a high quality, well written biography.

Tito Puente, Mambo King/Tito Puente, Rey del Mambo
I love the illustrations and appreciate that this is a bilingual book. I've never heard of Tito Puente, so now I need to listen to some of his music with my kids to fully appreciate this biography. Can't beat a book that is a biography about a musician, written in English and Spanish and has fabulous illustrations and a nice cadence to the story.

From the Bellybutton of the Moon/Del ombligo de la luna: And Other Summer Poems/Y otros poemas de verano
This is a lovely collection of poems about children who visit their family in Mexico. The illustrations are bright and colorful and help you imagine the heat of the trip and bring the poems to life. I read this with my children. I would read the poem in English and one of them would read the poem in Spanish, taking turns who went first and which child got to read in Spanish.

As a child, my favorite poem might have been

Hierba verde (GREEN GRASS)
nos gusta (WE LOVE)
andar descalzos (TO GO SHOELESS)
entre la hierba verde (ON GREEN GRASS)

a la Madre Tierra (MOTHER EARTH)
le encanta hacernos (LOVES TO TICKLE)
cosquillas en los pies (OUR BARE FEET)

I've always preferred to be barefoot than to wear shoes, particularly in the grass.

But my very favorite poem is Keys to the Universe.
my Grandpa
Pancho
taught us

my brothers
my sisters
and me

our first
letters
in Spanish

his living
room was
our classroom

"and these are
the true keys
to the universe"

he'd tell us
pointing to
the letters

of the alphabet
on the makeshift
blackboard

*I'm looking forward to reading the other three poetry books by this duo.
(And I still haven't...so it is time to remedy that.)


I hope/plan to read the other English-Spanish books on this master list with my children in the near future. This list is very useful for me.

Marvelous. Thank you, Jenny.

We just got our own copy of Max: A Griggstown Mystery = Un Mystere de Griggstown and I tried reading the French aloud while our girls read the English at the same time. It was only mildly successful.

They thought the French was too distracting, even though I read it slowly and talked about the meanings of some of the words, especially cognates.

But our girls did express an interest in learning French (yay!) and I felt comfortable reading it (I tend to butcher any attempt at reading Spanish or Russian texts.)

The story was a bit weird, but very interesting and we loved that the story was told from the cat's perspective.

Thanks for sharing. I think any book that can get kids interested in another language is a good one/ :)

A must, imo, for any family that collects books like this is See and Say: A Picture Book in Four Languages by Antonio Frasconi (Caldecott honor recipient for The House That Jack Built). Four languages! And marvelous art.

Although the story itself is in English, Yetta speaks Yiddish, and the feral parrots speak Spanish, in Beautiful Yetta's Hanukkah Kitten by Daniel Pinkwater. Pronunciation is provided handily within in each speech bubble, along with the Hebrew letters in Yetta's. I've not yet read Beautiful Yetta: The Yiddish Chicken but I assume that is the first book in this set and is similarly structured.

I just read The Storyteller's Candle/La velita de los cuentos. I thought it was lovely. Here is my review: "This is a lovely book based around Pura Belpre's life...but a fictional account. Hildamar and Santiago are cousins who have just moved to NYC from Puerto Rico. They admire the beautiful library but their family says they can't go inside because no one there speaks Spanish. But then Pura Belpre visits their school and tells stories in English and Spanish and invites all the children to visit the library. The illustrations in this book are remarkable, including collage elements from the New York Times on January 6, 1930. The book contains an author's note, a note about the artwork and a glossary of Spanish terms (the book is written side by side in English and Spanish...but a few Spanish words are incorporated into the English text. Most of these terms are explained in the glossary.). Highly recommended."

I see you read it several years ago, Kathryn, and also really liked it.

Jenny wrote: "I just read The Storyteller's Candle/La velita de los cuentos. I thought it was lovely. Here is my review: "This is a lovely book based around Pura Belpre's life...but a fictional..."

Yes, I loved it! Thank you so much for posting here :-)

Finally was able to get a copy of Water Rolls, Water Rises: El agua rueda, el agua sube from our library. It was just as good as I'd heard it was and I really liked it. I posted my review here.

The Girl Who Wore Too Much: A Folktale from Thailand is a charming adaptation, with a very good author's note. The Thai text is small, and is in its original script (not transcribed into Roman phonetics), but is pretty to look at.

The "Am I Small" series feature a standard picture book of a little girl who asks whether she is small, and she receives different answers according to whom she asks (and realises she is everything and anything, that size is relative, and she is thus, just right).

This book is basic and simple, and it has been published in many many dual language versions, from extinct languages like Gothic and Latin to Chinese and Tahitian (the list is both expansive and interesting). Most of these books are available on the kindle (but the text can be a bit small and zooming in sometimes a pain). A fun and imaginative way for children and linguistically intersted adults to practice a foreign language (I just tried the English/Gothic version, and found it kind of intruiging that because Gothic has been extinct for centuries, some of the words, like microscopic and gigantic could not be all that easily translated, while conversely, with another basically no longer vibrant language such as Latin, since so many of especially words of science and math were borrowed from Latin/French, this was not all much of an issue, and actually aided comprehension, I certainly found the Latin easier to figure out than the Gothic, although Gothic is considered a Germanic language and Latin is a Romance language).

The one I reviewed was English/Gothic and really fun.

Who is the author?

Cheryl wrote: "Who is the author?"

The orignal author is Philipp Winterberg, and I think this might have orignally been a German picture book. The illustrator is Nadja Wichmann.

Am I Small? Je Suis Petite, Moi ? (there are a huge number of editions listed, more than thirty pages of them, I think).

It sounds great! I enjoy books that show different perspectives like that.

These dual language Italian/English picture books are wonderful.

Ottavia e i Gatti di Roma - Octavia and the Cats of Rome: A bilingual picture book in Italian and English (sweet story, a bit long and I am having to check the English a lot, but also surprised how much I could figure out just because I know French and a bit of Spanish)

Marco Polo Vuole Viaggiare: Marco Polo Wants to Travel (very simplistic but great for a basic introduction to Italian, found the text easy to read and did not have to even check the English version).

Filastrocche Italiane - Italian Nursery Rhymes (very fun and a great introduction to Italian nursery rhymes).

Artemisia Vuole Dipingere - Artemisia Wants to Paint, a Tale about Italian Artist Artemisia Gentileschi (I loved this, both the text and the illustrations, less simplistic and more historical and descriptive than the Marco Polo book, but still with a simple narrative that I found generally easy to understand even without constantly checking the English version of the text, and a sweet little tale based on a true story supposedly).

D Is for Dragon Dance

Absolutely wonderful introduction to so much about Chinese culture. Illustrations are charming; please don't judge by the mysteriously poorly reproduced images of the cover here. Author's and artist's notes are also illuminating, though I would have liked some 'further reading' or bibliographic titles. Highly recommended to all home-schooling families, primary school libraries, and ESL classrooms.

Cheryl wrote: "D Is for Dragon Dance

Absolutely wonderful introduction to so much about Chinese culture. Illustrations are charming; please don't judge by the mysteriously poorly reproduced images ..."

Did you find this on Open Library? It looks great.

I did not; my little local library bought it. Perhaps because we have a university that attracts a lot of students and families from China?

Sounds wonderful. Thx!

Jorge Argueta has written several bi-lingual books about food that I will be reading over the few days. They look delightful.

Cheryl wrote: "Jorge Argueta has written several bi-lingual books about food that I will be reading over the few days. They look delightful."

They are really fun and I love the set up being not side by side but vertical. It made checking the Spanish much easier for me.