Skip to main content

Week 2: Tracking them down

The weather is much colder today, and I’ve been wearing merino layers to work. We even had our lunch inside. The castle cafe had red candles lit on each table, which created a lovely warm atmosphere. But in between all of that, I did get some work done.

Mostly today I was methodically searching the IJB catalogue for ployglot books listed under hundreds of country codes. I managed to find about four more hidden multilingual picturebooks which I’ve now ordered from the stacks. I also had an interesting meeting with some of the language specialists who work at the IJB tracking down a few other books which they have borrowed at the moment, and they were able to alert me to a few other books not even on my list.


After I finished work,  I called in to the ‘Lending Library’ which is essentially a public library open from 2pm-6pm each day. It was full of parents and children, and lots of lovely noise. Many of the children had bike helmets on as they have all biked here, even little 3 and 4 year olds. Anyway, while I was there tracking down some other books I found a WHOLE SHELF of multilingual books. It turned out many of them were bilingual, and I really am after more than two languages, but I found probably another 4 books. So bit by bit and in a rather haphazard manner, I am tracking these books down!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 2: The Research begins

Today was another warm autumn day, a pleasure to walk to work in. I arrived at 9.30 and started looking through the box of books I ordered through the IJB catalogue before I arrived. It is very difficult searching for books which are multilingual as this is not a tag in the search criteria. The books found were a mixture of quite a few bilingual Japanese/English books, and a selection of books featuring English and a minority language such as Cree, Spanish, Inuktituk and Greenlandic. There were also three picturebooks featuring characters discussing issues relating to being bilingual, for example in Yoko Writes her Name  (Rosemary Wells, 2008),   Yoko can write her name in Japanese and English. Her classmates respond with jealousy and in the process draw on several common prejudices around bilingualism. The search also did   manage to identify 5 picturebooks with between 3 and 5 languages in them, and I spent most of the day really enjoying analysing the linguistic ...
1 comment
Read more

Day 17: Attitudes to language

A few more books have come up from the stacks, and I have enjoyed a day back analysing some picturebooks, this time relating to attitudes to language. One I’d like to share with you is Yoko Writes her Name (Wells, 2008), an anthropomorphic tale of a kitten at kindergarten called Yoko who can write her name and numbers in Japanese. Some of the children in the class make fun of here and tell her she will not graduate from kindergarten, but the teacher, Mrs. Jenkins, decides that the class will have Japanese as a second language, and Yoko helps her classmates learn to write their names in Japanese Katakana script. This story reflects many different attitudes towards bilingualism, and presents many opportunities for children to start to learn to think about what characters in the story may be feeling. At the start of the story Yoko’s mum says she is proud of Yoko for writing her name. The text states “Yoko could write her name perfectly”, and the illustrations show she is writing...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 30: Last day

This will be my last entry for my time at the International Jugenbibliothek. I feel very sad to be leaving. It has been such a wonderful experience in so many ways: the books, the people, and experiencing living in Munich. I have cleared my piles of books off my desk and found a few beautiful almost coffee table books entitled ‘The Best Children’s Books in the World’ and 100 Great Children’s Picturebooks’ to look at for my last day. I have also just had the pleasure of meeting Junko from USBBY who has just arrived from the US to work here for a month. I last met Junko at the IBBY conference in NZ, and we have a lot to discuss, so I am going to have lunch with her today, and dinner with her when I return next Friday. A final treasure! Working at IJB has provided focus and resources for my research concerning multilingual picturebooks, and given me time to really think and develop a book proposal. It is such a privilege, and a time I will always treasure. ...
Post a Comment
Read more