Dr. Seuss in Russian

I have heard from a friend of mine today who lives in Kansas City, MO, and is raising two toddlers. She is trying to raise her kids with Russian and English, but finds it difficult to find Russian literature at reasonable prices. Her son and daughter love Dr. Seuss books (and so does Sasha), and she tries to read those to them in Russian. And, of course, when someone translates on a fly, it's difficult to convey the message while preserving the structure of a poem. Her new find is these Russian poetic translations of Dr. Seuss famous "Cat in the hat", "Horton hears a who", "Horton hatches an egg", and a couple more.

They are published on a Russian poetry page where anyone can publish their poetry. In fact, here is another collection which belongs to a close friend of mine from college: http://www.stihi.ru/avtor/radavilova . Although, all her poetry is in Russian.

Thank you, Olesya, for the link to Dr. Seuss poetry translations. I hope others will also find these helpful.

The very puzzling caterpillar

As I wrote before, I often read English books in Russian for Sasha. It is very interesting to see his reaction to certain books. There are sometimes pages that puzzle him, and he keeps returning to those again and again. For example in Tubby Time by Leslie Patricelli, Sasha always pauses on the page where the baby got soap in her eyes. He keeps pointing at it and asking something in his own language, and my only guess is that he thinks that the baby is crying and he wants to know why. And I cannot find the right way to explain to him that the baby got soap in her eyes.

And so is the case for The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Sasha keeps turning to the page where the caterpillar is extra fat, right before it turns into a cocoon.

I keep going through the book and explaining that the caterpillar ate through everything and turned into a cocoon to eventually become a butterfly, but Sasha seems confused... Until one day he just pats on the brown cocoon and says: "Kaka, kaka i pakaka", which sounds exactly like my expression: "Какал, какал и покакал!" (Pooped, pooped, and pooped it all out!).

It may be funny to you, but this is the most logical explanation to the child who is often constipated after his parents feed him all kinds of stuff. It definitely makes more sense than some cocoon. And hey, at least, Sasha does not think that the caterpillar is a "wasteful capitalist"!

Books, books, books...

I haven't written anything in a while, and I would like to blame it on Thanksgiving weekend. As everybody else, we had four days filled with turkey feasts, visits with friends and car trips. Car trips is something that we don't do often, because we don't own a car. And I noticed that car trips resulted in not just less movement, but, with mommy and daddy sitting in the front, also in less direct communication with Sasha. It was mostly him listening to mommy and daddy speaking English. So, I guess, long weekends and vacations will always mean more English, and I would just have to make up for Russian afterwards.

During the dinner at a friend's house, Greg was telling everybody how he reads "Great Day For Up!" by Dr. Seuss to Sasha every morning. As Greg was reciting two or three lines from the book, Sasha all of a sudden said very loud and clearly: "Up! Up!". I am not sure if he understands that he could use this word to tell us that he wants to be picked up, but he definitely remembers the book.

And as I previously wrote, he is becoming quite a book lover, spreading the night time books on our bed, when it's time for bed time stories.

His favorite Russian book is "Where did the sparrow eat his lunch?" by S.Marshak. It's about the sparrow eating lunch at the zoo with all these different animals. He ate carrots with the elephant, and grains with the rhino... And the crocodile almost ate him. Sasha really loves that book, anticipating every line. He also pulls it out from the shelve, when he is in that play area.

In the meantime, the holidays are rapidly approaching. So, I tried to find some nice winter time books at the library. Now, the problem will be that Sasha does not really want to read any new books. Instead, he prefers to read his favorite ones over and over again. So, I tried the counting book "One Snowy Day" with no success.

Any other suggestions for good winter time books?

Sasha, Books & Kiki

I am a strong believer that you cannot just drill a vocabulary into a small child and expect him to know and use those words. Our environment sets up the stage for learning, and the first words that a child learns reflect his day-to-day living, his routines, his likes & dislikes.

And so, it is easily explainable why the new addition in Sasha's vocabulary is книжки / books. And I have to say that I have heard him saying book in English, and also trying to pronounce книжки in Russian. The Russian word for books is very difficult to pronounce, because it has the sound zh (there is no way to really spell it in English), but he just says kiki instead of knizhki.

Sasha is being read to by Greg in English every morning and every night. The repertoire includes Dr. Seuss and Sandra Boynton, as well as others. I read to Sasha in Russian, but I do it during the day when the mood strikes, and there is no routine around it. We keep cardboard books on the lowest shelve in the living room, and Sasha can pull them out if he wants to. That's usually when I read to him. I just read the books that he pulls from the shelve, and with advice from a friend, I am just translating the English ones as I go.

So, lately, when Sasha sees books and wants us to read to him, he says kiki a lot. Also, there were nursing sessions, from which Sasha just crawled away towards kiki. The episode when Sasha used the English word was also a nursing routine right before bed. Usually, I nurse him, and then Greg comes in and reads him some bedtime stories. So, on that particular occasion, Sasha was overly excited and did not nurse too well. He kept stopping looking at me and saying stuff that I don't understand yet. So, he looked up and said: "Papa?" And I responded in Russian: "Yes, Daddy is coming soon, let's eat some more". So, he nursed another second or two, looked up and said: "Book?" So, obviously, the English word is strongly associated with Dad, who reads to him in English.

Searching for foreign language books

This proves to be quite a task, as there are many websites that cater to bilingual education by offering bilingual books. Personally, I think that purchasing bilingual books is not necessary. There is more sense in finding books in one language, in other words, purchasing monolingual books in two different languages. First, if the book can be read in two languages, which language will be preferred by a child? If a child is very interested in characters, but cannot pick in what language this book will be read to him, the monolingual book benefits to acquiring more vocabulary.

Second, I feel that offering bilingual books means raising your child on generic culture: no culturally authentic characters, no authentic interactions, etc.

Worldlanguage.com, as well as Amazon offer foreign language editions (I searched Russian edition) for books that were originally published in English. They are beautifully made, but I see the same problem arising - generic characters and utterances. If you are looking for foreign language books for your child, here are the methods I suggest:

• Stop by a branch of your public library that is located in a neighborhood with high percentage of people who speak the language you are trying to teach your child. Most likely, there will be books donated by someone in the community and, even if you decide not to check them out, you can at least get a list of children authors.
• Search authors.
• Search "Russian children books" (or whatever language you need) instead of "bilingual children books".
• Team up with other parents to start book exchange to keep your selection fresh.

Twinkle twinkle little star - Russian translation

I love picking out children books at the Denver Library. But with our setup at home (I use Russian with Sasha and my husband uses English with him), I cannot read majority of them to my son, unless they are picture books. Picture books are easy to translate in Russian as I go, but the poems are a different thing.

Contrast objects help to learn sounds

This week, I stumbled upon the website of the Psychology Department at the University of British Columbia. Their infant studies provide some amazing information about bilingual babies, as well as about language acquisition in general. Their research is fascinating. Today, I just wanted to talk about one particular discovery - how babies acquire sounds, specifically those sounds that are similar, but different.