Bilingual Picture Books Research Articles

The balance of Spanish and English child-directed text in bilingual picture books

The balance of Spanish and English child-directed text in bilingual picture books

The implications of typographic design in bilingual picturebooks for hierarchies

Presentation of text in picturebooks is an under-investigated field that requires consideration in order to support readers and those selecting books for readers. A unique form of picturebook is the bilingual picturebook which presents a story in two languages. The complexities of language readability and legibility are increased in these books, with implications for reader perception of the typographic design. In this paper we outline considerations for the design and presentation of two languages in bilingual picturebooks. We provide a discussion and analysis of text layout in Māori-English bilingual picturebooks and present guidelines for authors, designers, and publishers as well providing recommendations for the required further investigation into typographic layout for bilingual picturebooks.

Plátanos Go with Everything/Los Plátanos van con todo by Lissette Norman

Reviewed by: Plátanos Go with Everything/Los Plátanos van con todo by Lissette Norman Amanda Toledo Norman, Lissette Plátanos Go with Everything/Los Plátanos van con todo; illus. by Sara Palacios; tr. from the Spanish by Kianny N. Antigua. HarperCollins, 2023 [32p] Trade ed. 9780063247789 $17.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R 5-8 yrs In this inviting bilingual picture books, narrator Yesenia explores the various ways plátanos can be prepared as well as their significance to her Dominican American family. As Mami explains how plátanos grow (upward, feet “always reaching for the stars/siempre buscan alcanzar las estrellas”), she also reflects on how plantains bridge their homeland in the Dominican Republic to their new home in the United States. Evocative similes tie the narrative together: plátanos are like “baskets of green treasure/canastas de tesoros verdes,” “a love letter/una carta de amor,” “a magical cure/un remedio mágico.” Pura Belpré-winning illustrator Palacios brings vibrancy and warmth to the story with vivid oranges, yellows, and browns that have an almost watercolor appearance. While at least one character is smiling with each turn of a page, Palacios differentiates them, sometimes joyful beaming at a family reunion, sometimes savoring grins, sometimes quiet, contemplative smiles at wishes sent up on a breeze. Dominican translator Antigua keeps the flow of the story in Spanish while making it distinctly Dominican, using terms like “chichiguas” for kites and “chulo” for cool. While this is a bit lengthy for a storytime, it is easily adaptable [End Page 160] and a good fit for older children who will enjoy the art and make connections to their own families in Spanish or bilingual storytimes. A recipe for mangú on the back of the book will also make it a yummy take-home book. Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

IDENTIFYING COMPOSITIONAL INSTRUMENTS IN A BILINGUAL PICTURE BOOK FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING

Bilingual picture books are one of the materials in joint-reading activities between adults and pupils. When using picture books, adults face difficulty conveying meaning from the book to children. Therefore, this paper investigates the compositional elements of a bilingual picture book and provides an understanding of exploring a picture book to create meaningful reading activities. This case study employs a multimodal discourse analytical approach to understand the placement of the visual resources and the dual text of a bilingual picture book entitled Kina Punya Teman Baru. The result shows the compositional instruments tend to attract the reader's focus on the characters and the continuity of the storyline. The tendency of using co-located backgrounds along with the simple bull eye focus of images directs readers to the actions and emotions experienced by the character. Visual elements in a bilingual picture book are put in a contextualized setting offering readers the to explore the particular image. This bilingual picture book uses Indonesian as L1 and English as L2. The composition of the verbal text layout indicates that this bilingual picture book is intended for pupils speaking Indonesian and are willing to learn English, but they still require scaffolding in accessing the language being learned.

How Many Palabras? Codeswitching and Lexical Diversity in Spanish-English Picture Books

Bilingual picture books have been growing in popularity, with caregivers, teachers, and researchers increasingly interested in understanding how picture books might be able to support the learning of words in two languages. In this study, we present the first evaluation of the quantity and quality of text contained within bilingual picture books in English and Spanish targeted to children ages 0–9 and available to parents in the United States. We focus specifically on a sample of codeswitching books (N = 45) which present text in one language embedded in another language. All books were transcribed and evaluated for (1) the number of words and utterances presented in each language; (2) the quality and complexity of text presented in each language; and (3) how switching occurred between the two languages. Results showed that although picture books in our sample presented predominantly English text and more complex English sentences, relatively more unique words were presented in Spanish. Furthermore, picture books in our sample presented frequent switching between languages, particularly within utterances. We suggest that bilingual picture books provide children with potentially enriching yet asymmetrical opportunities for learning in each language.

Using dual language picturebooks with children in an after school club

Dual language picturebooks use more than one language in the text of the book. There is increasing literature showing the potential of such books to support language learning, and recent studies explore their use in classrooms to raise awareness of multilingualism. This article describes the ways in which dual language picturebooks were used in an after school club of 8-11 year olds in a Latinx neighbourhood in Arizona. Over a six week period an inquiry cycle was used as a curricular framework for exploring dual language picturebooks featuring both familiar and unfamiliar languages for the children. Findings showed the importance of providing time for connection with the books, followed by demonstrations or readings of the picturebooks, and the importance of invitations for the children to explore ideas from the picturebooks. The article provides guidelines for using dual language picturebooks in classrooms, and ends with a provocation suggesting that bilingual picturebooks are not necessarily only for bilingual children.

"아시아권 다문화가족 영유아기 자녀를 위한 이중언어 그림책 실태"

본 연구는 다문화가족 영유아기 자녀를 위한 이중언어 그림책을 발행연도 및 주체, 병기언어, 장르 및 주제를 중심으로 분석해 다문화가족의 이중언어 교육에 필요한 도서 개발의 기초 자료를 제공하는 데 목적이 있다. 이를 위해 서울과 경기지역 다문화도서관에 비치된, 아시아 국가의 언어와 한국어를 병기한 그림책 255권(633권)을 대상으로 분석했다. 연구 결과 첫째, 다문화가족 영유아기 자녀를 위한 이중언어 그림책은 초기에는 민간기업 내 공공사업단, 비정부기구를 중심으로 발행되기 시작했으나 연속적이지는 않았고, 2010년부터는 출판사를 중심으로 현재까지 지속적으로 발행되고 있었다. 둘째, 병기된 언어는 국내 거주 결혼이민여성의 국적 비율과 유사하게 베트남어, 중국어, 태국어, 몽골어 순이었는데, 초기에는 주로 베트남어 중심으로 발행되다가 점차 다양한 국가의 언어를 병기하는 양상이었다. 셋째, 그림책의 장르는 옛이야기가 가장 많고, 정보그림책, 환상그림책, 동요·동시 순이었는데, 초기에는 한국의 옛이야기가 차지하는 비중이 가장 높았지만, 점차 여러 국가의 옛이야기 수가 증가하였다. 넷째, 그림책의 주제는 정의(권선징악), 전통문화, 지식·개념, 인간사랑, 유머·놀이, 모험, 다양성·문화비교, 의식주, 자연사랑 순이었으며, 이중언어 그림책임에도 다양성·문화비교를 주제로 한 책이 적은 양상이었다. 본 연구 결과는 다문화가족의 이중언어교육을 위해서 이중언어 그림책의 접근성을 높일 필요가 있으며, 다양한 국가의 문화를 포함한 주제와 언어로 발행되어야 하고, 짧고 반복되는 단어로 구성되어 말놀이가 가능한 그림책이 출판될 필요가 있음을 제시한다.

When the classic speaks for children

AbstractBob Dylan has significantly influenced American song tradition and popular music for more than five decades. As his songs are famous for the creative poetic expressions, they are not merely song lyrics, but also can be regarded as lyric poems. This paper aims to investigate the retranslation of Bob Dylan’s songs in bilingual picture books to explore how his classic musical works are repackaged both verbally and visually for contemporary children. The data for analysis are selected from two bilingual picture books on Dylan’s songs published in China in2018. Firstly, it conducts a detailed textual analysis of the English and Chinese song lyrics to analyze the appropriate translation strategies and methods for song translation. Secondly, based on visual narratives (Painter, Martin and Unsworth 2013), it analyzes the intersemiotic relations between texts and images in picture books to discuss how the emotions and narratives in Dylan’s songs are visually represented.

Meaning Equivalence and Shift of Noun Phrases in Bilingual Children’s Literature; Indonesian into English Translation

The study aims at describing the equivalence and shift occuring in translating noun phrases. Library research was applied to this study. The data were taken from two bilingual picture books entitled Princess Mui Zee written by Firma Sutan, Princess Barruna written by Shinta Handini and their translation into Indonesian by Asih Gandana as the translator. The result of the study shows that the meaning equivalence often occurs in formal correspondence. Then, the study also finds the structure shift existed in 15 NPs of both stories; the class shift occured in 3 NPs of both series; the unit shift happened in 1 NP of both series and the intra-system shift occured in 2 NPs.

Linguistic Landscapes of Bilingual Picturebooks in the White Ravens Catalogue

ABSTRACTResearch shows the power of bilingual picturebooks in classrooms which draw on the linguistic capital of multilingual children and show that the messages given to children depend on the ways in which the languages are treated. Previous research has shown that the language use within a picturebook may be considered a kind of linguistic landscape which reflects the relative status of languages within a community. In this article, eight dual language picturebooks from the White Ravens Catalogue 2015–17 are analysed in terms of which languages dominate their linguistic landscapes, and this is discussed in relation to the sociolinguistic contexts of the countries in which they are published. Results indicate that the outer and inner pages of the books are usually dominated in order, size and information by a colonial language, while in the body of the book the two languages are treated more evenly. However, one book shows the potential for bilingual picturebooks to create a non-partisan linguistic landscape.

The efficacy of a school-based book-reading intervention on vocabulary development of young Uyghur children: A randomized controlled trial

In China, a particular educational challenge is designing programs for millions of ethnic minority children who also speak a language other than Mandarin Chinese at home. Since most ethnic minority children living in China come from low-socioeconomic status (SES) families, learning Mandarin as a second language is a crucial milestone for them. However, little research has been conducted to explore how to support the bilingual development of young minority children in China. This study evaluated the efficacy of a randomized controlled book-reading intervention held in Xinjiang Province, a unique Uyghur-Mandarin Chinese bilingual region with the lowest GDP of any Chinese province. The school-based book-reading intervention (hereafter, the Xinjiang Project, or the XJP) included a special focus on Chinese-Uyghur bilingual picture books, curriculum of vocabulary instruction, and teacher training. We recruited 256 Uyghur 4–5-year-old children (96 four-year-olds and 160 five-year-olds) from 31 classes in 12 kindergartens from two cities (Urumqi and Turpan) and randomly assigned 16 classes (134 children) to the experiment group and the other 15 classes to the control group, blocked by city, age and, a kindergarten ranking indicator. Across the one-year intervention, we collected three waves of Chinese and Uyghur vocabulary data. We used an individual growth modeling framework employing generalized linear mixed models and found that the intervention led to a more rapid development of Chinese receptive vocabulary (effect size = 0.68) and Uyghur expressive vocabulary (effect size = 0.38). This study shows that well-designed book-reading programs can benefit language minority children by supporting the development of both home and school languages simultaneously. The implications for bilingual education policy-making in China are discussed.

Representing cultures through language and image: a multimodal approach to translations of the Chinese classic Mulan

ABSTRACTMulan, a Chinese maiden who impersonates a man and takes her father’s place in a war against a fictitious Hun invasion, is not only an important classic in Chinese literature but has also become a significant cultural text in the West through adaptations and translations. This paper investigates different verbal and visual translations of Mulan in picture books. The study employs theories of multimodal discourse analysis and Jakobson’s concept of intersemiotic translation as the theoretical basis for analysis and discussion. The data under examination include two bilingual picture books: Song of Mulan (2010) and Mulan (2012). First, I conducted a textual analysis of the Chinese texts and their English translations; then, the visual materials in picture books were examined; the final discussion explores the intersemiotic translation between the verbal and visual materials. I conclude that through verbal translation and visual adaptation, Mulan has been culturally transformed from a legendary Chinese heroine into a hybrid Americanized tomboy with great popularity in the global market.

The Effect of Four Different Approaches to Parent-Child Reading on Young Chinese Children’s Reading

Forty families with four- to five-year-old Chinese children were chosen as experiment participants and equally divided into four groups for an eight-week parent-child reading experiment in different reading modes. (1) Groups A, B, and C read one of three kinds of Chinese-English audio bilingual picture books respectively: touch reading books, electronic books, and printed books + CDs, 30 minutes per day with their parents in the approach of Early Synchronous Bilingual Reading (ESBR). After the eight-week experiment, children participants cultivated good habits of and interest in reading and their reading comprehension, retelling and expression competence were improved significantly. Performance of each group in weekly reading time and frequency, proportion of recognized Chinese and English words was A>B>C>>D and differed significantly ( p <0.01). The results show that reading bilingualism synchronously is effective and economical, and it not only enhanced children’s bilingual competence, but broadened their multicultural international horizon and developed their creative thinking and leadership. (2) Group D kept their original family reading mode and did not progress significantly in reading habits and test indicators ( p -value=0.5-1). (3) Determinants of reading effect are parents’ awareness and choice of reading material, mode, frequency and time. The experiment results suggest that parents can choose bilingual picture books, cultivate their preschool children’s reading habits, and develop their children’s bilingual reading, listening, and speaking competence through interactive parent-child reading. Keywords: Audio bilingual picture books; early parent-child reading; approach of ESBR; comparative experiment

Family Literacy Project

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to describe a family literacy project involving a partnership of school‐aged children and their families with in‐service and pre‐service teachers enrolled in a university course on literacy instruction for English language learners. This project consists of family members sharing their stories with their children to be later transformed into bilingual picture books. This project engaged teachers, families, EL learners, and community members to become partners in students’ literacy development. Teachers engaged students from culturally‐ and linguistically‐diverse backgrounds and their families to produce student‐authored and self‐illustrated bilingual picture books in the classroom setting. In this article, we present the instructional process for teachers who are interested in partnering with families to create bilingual books.

Dual Language Picturebooks in English and Māori

Dual language or bilingual picture books are extremely powerful resources in the education of children who come to school with multiple languages (Helot and O’Laire; Sneddon). The way languages are presented within such books reveals attitudes towards languages within sociolinguistic settings (Hadaway and Young). Children’s picture books featuring more than one language, known as Dual Language Books (DLBs), are not only important in maintaining community languages belonging to immigrant and refugee communities but also have an important role to play in maintaining indigenous languages (Hadaway and Young). In this paper, representations of te reo Māori (the indigenous language of New Zealand) in Dual Language Books are analyzed and discussed in relation to the current New Zealand sociolinguistic setting and to the educational policy supporting the use of te reo Māori in all classrooms.

Code-Switching in Multilingual Picturebooks

This article demonstrates that multilingual picturebooks demand sophisticated visual and linguistic skills from the reader. Based on a close investigation of two bilingual picturebooks from Korea and Iran: Lee Tae-Jun/Kim Dong-Seong: Waiting for Mama (2007) and Farideh Chalatabarie/Scharareh Chosrawami: The Wrong Bus (2012), I argue that the intense preoccupation with pictures and text in multilingual picturebooks requires a specific capacity that complies with the linguistic model of code-switching.

Bilingual Books for Children: An Interview with Nicolas Kanellos, Director of Pinata Press

According to a recent Census Bureau report, nearly one-fifth of America's schoolchildren now speak a language other than English at home, and about seventy percent of these are fluent in Spanish. Already in 1974, the substantial numbers of schoolchildren whose primary language was not English led Congress to pass the Bilingual Education Act. Heatedly contested at the polls, bilingual education has without contest been highly effective in stimulating the publication of bilingual fiction and non-fiction. At one level, these books aim to speed the assimilation into English of first and second generation immigrant speakers of other languages, as well as help English speakers acquire a second language. But bilingual texts can have very complex agendas beyond language acquisition that include the preservation of cultural practices, folklore, and history; enhancing minority children's self esteem and social interaction; and building a culture of tolerance and resistance to ethnic stereotypes. The physical layout of picture books, as Jarasa Kanok notes elsewhere in this issue, can contribute to this complexity, by silently encoding hierarchic relationships between cultures and languages, or playfully weaving visual differences that mimic verbal code-switching. Major foundations such as the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts have supported the development of bilingual publication, with grants to small presses such as Curbstone and Arte Publico. Mainstream publishers have joined the market--Henry Holt, Harry Abrams, Harper Collins, Puffin, Harcourt Brace, William Morrow, Macmillan, Avon, and Disney. A surprising number of bilingual picture books draw on familiar stories that have no particular ethnic interest: Los dos malvados ratones, Caperucita roja or Los osos Berenstain are a few examples. If capitalists have a stake in this market, so do politicians, witness the entry of Subcomandante Marcos into this terrain. More seriously, academic presses at western universities, such as Colorado University, the University of Washington, the University of Alaska, or the University of Nebraska, maintain lists in Native American languages and culture, including some bilingual texts. Since orality is such an important component of these projects, we must welcome enterprises like Audio-Forum, which offers a broad array of bilingual tapes in Native American languages. Oyate and the Council for Indian Education also provide links to small presses that publish bilingual picture books, such as Kiva and Clear Light (Hopi), Willowisp (Cree), or Press Pacifica (Hawaian). The children's library of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center offers a resource to scholars as well. Some of the presses that have emerged to satisfy this market print children's texts in many languages (e.g. Mantra and Bilingual Baby Company). Others specialize in a language or region (e.g. Cherokee Publications, Kodansha, Pacific Asia Press, and Shen's Books). The enormous range of the field, from print to electronic publication, can be seen by a visit to ACQweb at http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/acqweb. The majority of bilingual publishers, however, inevitably address the one child in seven who speaks Spanish, along with the many parents who want their children to learn Spanish (Globo Libros, Cinco Puntos Press, for example). The oldest and largest publisher of Hispanic literature is the award-winning Arte Publico, established in 1979 and renowned for its project Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage. Its series Pinata Books, launched by Dr. Nicolcas Kanellos in 1994, focuses on Hispanic children's and young adult literature and spans bilingual picture books, poetry and novels. MELUS: When you launched Pinata Books, did you expect to publish for different ages, ranging from early language acquisition to young adult? How do you distinguish the coming-of-age books you publish for young adults from those for adults? …