Bilingual Books

A SlideShare Presentation on bilingual reading - its advantages, the skills it builds and some bilingual titles from Tulika

Bilingual Books

View more presentations from Tulika Books.

Learning the mother-tongue

We found this article in the Times of India on 'English vs. mother tongue' (via this post on the Pratham blog) which says,

"...we are still left with the challenge of facilitating intuitive learning in a classroom. Children who struggle with any language are the ones who have no exposure to that language in their daily lives. There are natural processes that occur when we learn our mother tongue or when we learn languages in a multilingual environment. How do we bring these into the classroom?"

and the article goes on to describe a method of immersive language learning that helped children of indigenous communities learn several languages.

Some of the discussions we have had in the comments section of this blog and others and on Twitter are relevant to this issue. Mothers tell us about the value of reading to their children in the mother tongue, that Tulika's books have played crucial roles in helping their children improve their knowledge of their mother tongues. All of them reinforce the value of reading in the mother tongue.

Here are some quotes:


utbtkids says, "I live in California. Tamil is my mother tongue. But to my kids, 5 years and almost 4, after they started fulltime school, Tamil has become their mother's tongue!
I work as a preschool teacher and am fully aware if the benefits of encouraging home language. But I hit road blocks every now and then.
At times like these Tulika's bilingual books and Tamil books have been very helpful. Though I cannot provide complete immersion, I heavily rely on Tulika to provide print awareness. I own atleast half of your publications, btw :) My children love Tulika books. Their favorite is The Seed and Brahma's Butterfly.
I also volunteer to teach Tamil for the California Tamil academy and use your books to enhance the classroom experience of the kids in my class."

Sandhya says, "Tullika books were specifically recommended by my daughter's Hindi and Kannada teachers at school for improving her language skills. For a while, they were even available through a parent at school. My daughter loved them, esp. the bilingual ones. She can now read most of those for her age by herself."

memetales 

says, "I do think with technology, kids are exposed to more cultures/practices and are learning to enjoy that-colloquial language too...Also what we seek out as parents matters - we celebrate diversity - no reason why a story from the other end of the world cannot touch my heart and change my life - even if I do not get the nuances of the culture

ChoxBox says, "When we moved back to India, I bought Tulika books to get my older child familiar with Kannada - the bilingual as well as only Kannada ones."

babylovesbooks had this post on reading to the child in the mother tongue. Responding to a comment by Tulika, she says, "Yes, when it comes to kids, there’s really no limit to how much they can learn and absorb. Most of the time, it’s a question of how much effort and time we grown-ups are willing to invest in them. I’m sure Tulika books make a great impact in this regard. I will definitely be checking them out for my daughter."

The story behind Dinaben and the lions of Gir

Stories, we know, can take many different forms and can be told in many different ways to children. Dinaben and the Lions of Gir came about as a concoction, blending real stories and everyday concepts. In retrospect, it seems incredible how the different elements that we individually discovered seamlessly amalgamated for the entire package. The end product, we hope, will find a sweet spot in the fiction-non-fiction spectrum for children.
Our personal friendship spanning almost three decades now, blossomed in the 80's in Chennai. Amidst rows of street houses, we played on open terraces and verandahs, rode bicycles cruising among cattle and bustling everyday street life. Fast forward to the present, we are mothers raising children of our own. Living in the United States, on opposite coasts, we have regular discussions on the mundane and not-so-mundane aspects of parenting and our daily lives. And books for children typically take up a significant portion of our talks.

The stories we shared with our little ones and the books we read to them inspired us to toy with the idea of writing for children. Quite regularly, we recalled with nostalgia many stories from our growing up years in India. One that particularly stood out involved everyday rituals of street cattle being generously fed and then milked, of fresh milk delivered and thick curds made at home. We thought it would be interesting to tell children the behind-the-scene story of cartons of milk and bottles of ghee that line supermarkets today. From this sprouted a piece of narrative set in rural India to highlight the elementary process of dairy making.
In our pursuit for a pastoral setting to give it a realistic edge, we knew from the very start, that the grasslands and wilderness abundant in Gujarat would be a strong possibility. We singled out the community of “owners of livestock”, locally called the Maldharis, who had their own ghee making traditions. Our passion for this interesting group soared and countless hours of research followed. Dinaben, our very own Maldhari woman, the central character who would later let little children peek into her household, was born out of our imagination!

Gir was also the last home to the endangered Asiatic lions.  The fine balance that existed between the people and the lions of Gir intrigued us.  The story of the endangered lions and the marginalized lives of the people that shared the forests also needed to be told.  This we came to realize, while still holding onto the simple outline we had originally created about dairy making. We had grown to love the parallel threads so dearly, it was clear we needed to tie the threads together. When the Asiatic lions gained equal prominence along with Maldharis, the jigsaw seemed complete. Typically, lions feature in fiction as unconquerable creatures.  In our case, they are real and threatened in their only home. And so are the people. The intersection between the Maldharis and the lions became the perfect backdrop.

Sandhya Rao of Tulika saw our initial presentation of the proposal as a potential candidate for the bilingual photography-based series. Creating versatile text to aid easy translation was one of the most challenging and exciting phases of the writing process.  In order to bring the story to life, we joined forces with people as passionate as ourselves, who were more than willing to share their work of art for this project. Real people who had made an emotional connection and captured moments of the people, forests and animals of Gir…what more could we have asked for? For this, we are grateful to them. Simple text and real photography in the child-friendly context of lion cubs and dairy products, we believe, will help children assimilate loftier ideas of the environment and rural communities of India. With Sandhya’s support, the visual spreads were matched well with the appropriate text.  It was a great experience to work with her. She steered us in the right direction at every stage of the process.

Scenes or sights inspire stories. Sometimes, experiences provide the material.  For us, it was a little bit of everything – a process that continuously evolved and culminated in this fabric woven out of individually rich strands. In India’s rich landscape, nature collaborates with people in so many unique ways. Dinaben and the Lions of Gir also highlights the link between everyday things we take for granted and the ecological significance of it all. Through our work, we hope to encourage young minds to celebrate this.

- Meera Sriram and Praba Ram, authors 

P.S. A review of the book is up at Saffron Tree.