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.
I ended up with a large collection of English books, many of which came from our loving American grandparents, aunties, etc. I'm reading most of them in Russian on-the-fly translations - as long as it is not poetry!
ReplyDeleteAlso, being in Seattle, we have access to an excellent Russian book store. They not only have all the classics, but also in editions that are sturdy and won't fall apart (which can be a problem with cheaply printed Russian books).
Since my kids are going to English-speaking daycare, they are immersed in English and don't have as many opportunities to speak Russian with me. I stayed at home for 3 years with Zoe, and she has a very good grasp of Russian, but Yana started daycare at about 20 months old, and her Russian is not nearly as strong. So, I make sure that we talk in Russian a lot and read Russian books.
Anna:
ReplyDeleteI have to say that the majority of English books in our collection are poems. I mean the ones that are appropriate for Sasha's age. So, I translate (like you) as I go when I read books with simple sentences. "Dear Zoo" or "Who is hiding on the farm" or "Tubby time" - those kinds. Then, my husband is in charge of reading the poems by English authors. He also throws in one or two of German ones.
I agree that unfortunately the books published in Russia are not as sturdy as American books. I am also not so fond of illustrations in the most recent Russian children books. They use some sort of computer software to generate images. I would rather prefer them to publish books with hand drawn images, but I guess the publishers don't want to pay to good illustrators.
Thank you for your input. I was curious as to how your kids are juggling two languages. I had no doubt that you would expose them to Russian.