Departments : Teaching With Children's Books :
Bi the Book
By Lisa Von Drasek
Expand awareness of diverse cultures and help second-language learners feel at home by building a bilingual classroom library
The snazzy, jazzy finale of Cool Cats Counting by Sherry Shahan, one of this season's standout bilingual reads.
Pistu Downey teaches Spanish to kids ages three to six at the Bank Street College School for Children. She suggests that reading bilingual books – books that contain words in languages other than English – gives children a very good opportunity of exposure to multiple languages. Teachers who have bilingual and multilingual books in their classrooms are sending the message that they acknowledge the importance of those languages and home cultures. These teachers, by exposing their students to different alphabets and words, are also raising awareness of diversity for the English speakers in their classrooms.
Beginning biliteracy
In the article "Bilingual Books: Promoting Literacy and Biliteracy in the Second-Language and Mainstream Classroom" by Gisela Ernst-Slavit and Margaret Mulhern (www.readingonline.org/articles/ernst-slavit), there is a clear, helpful table that summarizes strategies for using bilingual books in the classroom. These strategies include:
- Introducing a new topic. Literature that relates thematically to a new unit or lesson can serve well to acquaint a beginning English language learner with the topic at hand.
- Supporting independent reading. A book in the native language might serve well to soothe feelings of frustration and exhaustion common among L2 (second language) learners.
Bilingual bounty
Here is a selection of bilingual (Spanish and English) and multilingual (contain words in more than one language) books to consider using in your classroom.
Yum! Yuck!: A Foldout Book of People Sounds by Linda Sue Park and Julia Durango (Charlesbridge, 2005, ISBN: 1-570-91659-4). A street scene unfolds with many kinds of families enjoying foods of a street market. "Leckah!" a boy exclaims in German; "Bah-bah!" a girl says in Farsi; "Yum!" two children exclaim in English. Over 10 languages are represented in words expressing emotions.
ABC x 3: English, Español, Français by Marthe Jocelyn (Tundra Books, 2005, ISBN: 0-887-76707-9). Enjoy zipping through the alphabet in English, Spanish and French. The capital and lowercase letters are paired with a corresponding word in each language, as in Bb – ball/ bola/balle and Cc – crocodile/cocodrilo/crocodile. We can enjoy the surprising similarities between the languages, including some that are the same word in all three, like "kiwi" and "radio."
Rin, Rin, Rin/Do, Re, Mi by Jose Luis Orozco (Cartwheel Books, 2005, ISBN: 0-439-64941-2). Scholastic has a new program called Lee y serás (Read and you will be), developed to serve Latino families by providing Spanish language materials. Rin, Rin, Rin/Do, Re, Mi, illustrated by Caldecott winner David Diaz, is an engaging song that reflects the everyday life of a loving family from sunrise to sunset. The English text is not a one-to-one translation of the Spanish but will support a bilingual reading.
A Sembrar Sopa De Verduras by Lois Ehlert, translated by Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy (Red Wagon Books, 1996, ISBN: 0-152-05608-4). This preschool favorite color-concept book shows the process of planting, growing and harvesting vegetables to make a pot of soup. Expertly translated into Spanish by Ada and Campoy, this vivid board book is a treasure for Spanish-speaking households as well as for kids beginning to learn the language.
Cool Cats Counting by Sherry Shahan (August House, 2005, ISBN: 0-874-83757-X). This jazzy counting concept book begins each rhyme in English and inserts Spanish numbers and animal words at the end of each verse. "Two dogs, hip-hop, bop-rom. Ho Daddy! Dos Perros." Or, "Seven rabbits, jump-and-jive, slappin' high-five. Zippety-Do-Rah! Sieto Conejos." The lively illustrations by Paula Barragán are reminiscent of South American folk art.
Look for more of Barragán's engaging art in Poems to Dream Together/Poemas Para Sonar Juntos by Francisco X. Alarcon (Lee & Low, 2005, ISBN: 1-584-30233-X), a collection of verse celebrating family and community. This giddy read-aloud has a Spanish language pronunciation guide.
L2 teaching resources
The Association for Library Service to Children (ALCS) provides several resources regarding bilingual and multilingual reading. Visit www.ala.org/ala/alsc/alscresources for information about El Día de los Niños/El Día de los Libros: a Celebration of Children, Families and Reading. This event, held annually on April 30, emphasizes the importance of literacy for every child regardless of linguistic and cultural background.
Click on the "Book Lists" link and view "Growing Up Latino in the U.S.A.," a graded, annotated bibliography, and "Bilingual Books for Children," where you'll find books representing several languages including Chinese, Russian, Swahili and Hopi.
For a collection of web resources for professional development, see Bank Street College Library's http://streetcat.bankstreet.edu/sites/secondlang.html These recommended links include www.cal.org from the Center for Applied Linguistics. This site provides a guide to online articles on topic areas such as bilingual education, language testing, two-way immersion and much more. Also take a look at www.everythingesl.net This site for teachers contains lesson plans, activity sheets and suggestions for books, videos and other media in the classroom.
To learn about several new audiobooks click here.
Lisa Von Drasek is Children's Librarian at the Bank Street College of Education in New York, NY.
November/December 2005, Vol.36, No.3
