Translanguaging (Day 7)

The books I alluded to yesterday are a set of 3 written and illustrated by Lynn Reiser, published by Greenwillow Books (an imprint of Harper Collins). One is called The Lost Ball/La pelota perdida (2002). Straight away I loved the endpapers which are filled with pictures of different kinds of balls: basketballs, soccer balls, tennis balls, golf balls, baseballs, yarn balls. It kind of acts as a visual glossary, but what is different about it, is there is only one language label beneath each ball, not two. So under some of the pictures of a baseball the label is ‘pelota de beisbol’ and under another the label is ‘baseball’. I liked this approach.

But the best bit was when I opened the story and saw how the author/illustrator/designer of the books (I’m not sure who makes these decisions, and it probably varies from publisher to publisher and maybe from book to book) had decided to represent Spanish and English on each page. The story is about two boys, each with a dog playing with a ball. For each dog the ball is thrown, and the dog brings back the wrong ball. The rest of the book shows the two boys searching for the owner of the ball their dog has brought back: “Is this your ball?” “No, our ball is a golf ball”. In the end the boys find each other and are able to exchange balls.

Most of the books I have been looking at present both languages on the same page, using some kind of visual cue to separate them. There is usually a space between the two texts, and often also some kind of small illustration or line between the two texts. Sometimes a large capital letter is used at the start of the paragraph (I believe these are called drop caps) using one colour for English and another for Spanish, and sometimes completely different colours are used for the entirety of each text. This is what The Lost Ball does: orange is used for English and green for Spanish, but the unique aspect of the design in this book is that the two texts are not always identical in meaning because each voice belongs to a different boy. On the first page there is an English voice in orange and a picture of Richard with an orange hat and giving his dog with an orange colour an orange ball, and below is a Spanish voice beside a  picture of Ricardo in a green cap giving a green ball to a different dog with a green collar.

Throughout the book the orange text (English) belongs to the boy with the orange hat and the green text (Spanish) belongs to the boy with the green hat. On some pages the texts say the same thing: “Today is a good day to play ball in the park, Comet” and  “Hoy es un lindo dia a la lepota en el parquet, Cometa”, and other pages the two texts are different: “Is this your ball? No, our ball is a tennis ball” and “Es esta to pelota? No, nuestra pelota es una pelots de basket” [Is this your ball? No our ball is a basketball]. Aside from the green and orange colours used for the text, the balls, the dog collars and the boys’ hats, and a range of colours used for the other balls featured, the illustrations are in black and white, and there is a wonderful double spread illustrations where  both boys can be seen in the same location looking for the owner of their ball but not yet seeing each other. In this scene the boys each buy an icecream and cross to the other side of the page, and from then on the green text is on the LH page and the orange text is on the RH page. There is so much to see and work out visually! Of course, finally the boys meet each other, exchange balls, and play together. In the final page as they farewell each other, there is a mixing of the languages. I so enjoyed reading this book and working out the clever visual techniques used by the author/illustrator/designer!

Lynn Reiser has also written two other books in the collection about two little girls, Margaret and Margareta, and similar techniques are used for representing the two languages, this time with pink for English and blue for Spanish. In one book, the two little girls go to the park with their mothers and meet each other there. Despite not knowing each other’s language, they play, and by the time their mothers call them to go home, they are each using some of the other’s language (with its own colour) embedded in their own language: “Mama this is my amiga [friend] Margarita, and her gatita [toy cat], Susanna. We had a fiesta [party] and a siesta [nap]”. Note the square brackets are mine and are not needed in the book due to the context.

Ofelia Garcia talks about the idea of ‘translanguaging’, which is a term used to describe how multilingual people do not keep languages separate; they mix and mingle all of their linguistic resources according to context. This idea of keeping languages very separate on different pages or divided by colour can be seen as a very monolingual approach to language, but Lynn Resier’s books both come to a place where the languages are mixed in authentic ways. In a way her books kind of explain translanguaging and language acquisition to readers, and I really appreciate this approach.

Now, what treasures will I find today?

Marisol McDonald and Super Diversity (Day 6)

Another beautiful day, more beautiful books. I am slowly getting to the bottom of my pile o Spanish English picturebooks. I think I should finish them by Tuesday afternoon, and then I’ll spend Wednesday checking through and filling gaps. The gaps are there because as I go through the books I become aware of new columns of information I want to collect, and up until that point, I haven’t got the information for previously analysed books. (Does that make sense?)

There are two series of books I have been really amazed by today. The first is a series about Marisol McDonald, an eight year old who has ‘Flaming red hair and nut-brown skin’ and who prefers things not to match. Read more about the books here http://www.monicabrown.net/books/marisol.html

There are two of the series in the Marantz Collection. They are delightful tales of a feisty girl who doesn’t quite fit in. In one book we are shown how Marisol loves to do and wear things that don’t match (Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match/Marisol McDonald no combina), and in the second (Marisol McDonald and the Clash Bash/ Marisol McDonald y la fiesta sin igual) Marisol has a party where there isn’t a princess theme or a soccer theme or a pirate theme. She sends her friends different invitations and they all turn up dressed differently and she loves it. The illustrator, Sara Palacios, does absolute justice to the outrageous colour and energy needed to represent this wonderful little girl and her family. From the illustrations we see her mum has dark skin and black hair, and her dad fair skin and red hair. No comment is made on this in the text, though. It is interesting to read the note from the author, Monica Brown: “I wrote this book because, like over 6 million Americans, I am multiracial. I’m the daughter of a South American mother and a North American father, and my childhood was spent in a close community of cousins, tios, and tias [aunties and uncles]. Like Marisol, my cousins and I are mixed- indigenous Peruvian and Spanish mixed with Scottish and Italian and Jewish, not to mention Nicaraguan, Mexican, Chilean and African. One thing most of us do share are freckles….People sometimes ask us “What are you?”…..Our mothers told us we are Americans, yes, but also citizens of the world. My life (and I bet yours too) is bound up with the history of many peoples, and like Marisol McDonald, I open my arms wide and embrace them all”.

Wow. How about that for diversity. And how about that for a statement. While my background is not as diverse as Monica’s, I do see myself in some of the statements she makes, and I wish I had been able to read these to my own daughter whose heritage includes English, Scandinavian, Irish, Sinhalese, Dutch, and German.

Most of the books I am reading include notes about the authors and illustrators, and in most cases it seems authors are telling a story from their own lives, or retelling a story their parents or grandparents told them, or creating a story about an important person in South American or Latino American history. Lots and lots of windows for someone like me to look through, and lots and lots of mirrors for young readers in the US (and other places) to see their physical and/or linguistic reflections in.

That’s enough for one day. I’ll tell you about the second series tomorrow. It does amazingly creative things with language…J

Being taken away (Day 5)

Today is Monday, and I have had a lovely gentle weekend of biking around Kent, enjoying the Farmers' Market, the river pathway, and I even found a yoga class to attend. Heaven really.  

I got through another heap of beautiful books on Friday, and wanted to share some of the books which stood out for me. Two were illustrated by an artist called Domi.  The one which stood out for me is based on her own life as part of a Mazateca village (South Mexico) forced to move to a new location with very poor soil because of the building of a dam. In the blurb of the book (Napi funda un pueblo/Napi makes a village, House of Anansi Press, 2010), Domi is described as “one of the most important indigenous book artists in the Americas. The stories from her childhood offer North American children a view into the lives of people whose spirit and courage in the face of loss of land, political repression and exploitation do not dim their  joy of living and their deep engagement in their physical and moral universe”. You can see the gorgeous cover of the book here, and those of you who know how much I love colour will smileJ

http://houseofanansi.com/products/napi-funda-un-pueblo-napi-makes-a-village

Another was the story of the first Puerto Rican librarian in the New York Public library system. Her name was Pura Belpre, and she created a space within the New York Public library where Spanish speakers were welcome and could borrow resources. I knew her name previously only for the award named after her which is awarded by the Association for Library Services for Children annually to a Latino or Latina author and illustrator whose work best represents Latino cultural experience.

You can see this year’s winners here:

http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/belpremedal

I’m aiming to get the Spanish-English books complete by the middle of Wednesday at the latest, so I will have time to look at the other dual language books featured in the collection, but we’ll see how we go. Sometimes I spend a lot longer on a book than is strictly necessary for data collection purposesJ but I am very happy to be taken away; that’s what good books do.

Linguistic Landscapes (Day 4)

It’s another beautiful warm morning here in Ohio.

On my way home yesterday, I explored the campus a little and found a beautiful memorial to the shooting of anti Vietnam protesters at Kent State University in 1970. It is a peaceful area now with information stations taking you through the events of May 4 1970, and a beautiful marble memorial too. I also biked around the neighbourhood near where I’m staying which is filled with 2 story wooden homes with porches and mainly no fences between or in front of them. To me this seems very American.

My work day yesterday saw me working through another 50 or so books, examining the different linguistic landscapes they present. Linguistic Landscape is a concept first explored by Landry and Bourhis (1997), Canadian researchers looking at how written or printed language in French Canadian surroundings tells us something about the status of these languages in a society. It’s a bottom up approach to language policy, revealing what is actually happening in a community compared with the top down official government policy on languages and their status.

So I am looking at how Spanish and English are presented in the linguistic landscape of the picturebook- which language comes first, which is bigger. How does this relate to the publisher, the author, and what effect might this have for the reader? I have a big spreadsheet and I am getting faster as I go. I had hoped to look at many different languages, but I think the Spanish English books will be a big enough project on this occasion!

As well as looking at the languages and how they are used, I am also keeping note of the topics they cover. The book I couldn’t stop thinking about when I got home yesterday was called ‘Benjamin and the Word’ published in 2005. It’s about a little boy whose mother is Russian and whose father is Mexican. A boy at his school calls him ‘a word’ which is never actually given, but is obviously some kind of racial slur, and the story is about he and his dad working through the hurt this causes and how he can work through his feeling with the boy who insulted him.

On a lighter note, I’ll end with another poem by Francisco X. Alacorn about a bilingual dog.

At home we have a bilingual dog

“guau guau” he first greets you in Spanish

And in case you don’t understand him then

“bow wow” he repeats barking in English

Looking through windows (Day 3)

We had some rain overnight, so it was a bit cooler this morning, and I had a pleasant bike ride into work. Yes, a bike ride!! My lovely colleague Marianne Martens has lent me a bike, and I am enjoying it very much, although staying to the footpaths as I don't trust myself to stay to the right.

I looked though about 50 more of the Spanish English dual language books from my subcollection from the Marantz collection yesterday, and am very much reminded of the metaphor used by Professor Rudine Sims Bishop that multicultural children's literature can be mirrors, windows and glass sliding doors. Certainly for me, yesterday, I felt like I was looking through many windows into worlds I am less familiar with. There are many stories relating to children's experiences of migration from Mexico and El Salvador to the United States. One that I found particularly  interesting is called 'My Diary from here to there' by Amada Irma Perez, following a girl's experience of her family's migration to the States, based on the experiences of the author herself.

There are also some lovely poetry collections by Francisco X. Alarcon (illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez, Children's Book Press, 1998). One includes a poem called 'From the Bellybutton of the Moon':

Whenever I say "Mexico"

I hear my grandmother telling me

about the Aztecs and the city they built

on an island in the middle of a lake

"Mexico" says my grandma

"means: from the bellybutton of the moon"

"don't forget your origin my son"

maybe that's why

whenever I now say "Mexico"

I feel like touching my bellybutton.

(p.11)

I am learning a lot by looking through the windows provided by these bilingual books.

Day 2

My first half day went very well. I looked through ten bilingual books and kind of found my feet in terms of how I am going to document my data.

Today is another warm day, and I have a lovely walk from where I'm staying to where I am working in the relatively cool morning.

I cam across two interesting publishing companies of Spanish-English bilingual picturebooks: Cinco Puntos Press and Pinata Press.

I documented two ways of presenting the two languages within the books. The first was English on the LHS and Spanish on the RHS; the second was English first on the page and Spanish below.

On the covers so far English is always first and Spanish second, sometimes in smaller font; the translator is sometimes acknowledged on the cover, and sometimes not. Generally speaking, so far, English is always dominant, and the content of the stories usually have some link to Latino culture, but it is early days...I have a trolley load of books still to go through.

The beginning

I have arrived in Kent after three flights over one very long and extended August 22nd! It is a lovely warm day, and students are starting to arrive on the Kent State University campus in readiness for the new university year which will start in September.

I was met at the Akron/Canton airport by Michelle Baldini, the librarian who looks after the collection, and I have just met with Marianne Martens, the director of the Reinberger Children' s Library Centre where the Marantz collection resides. They are lovely people and very welcoming.

I am starting today with all of the Spanish-English dual language picturebooks in the collection, as this is the largest proportion of dual language books. Brianna, a student assistant in the collection, has got them all out for me.

I have pictures to insert into this blog, but for some reason they're not uploading. I will try and fix this a little later tonight, but for now a beautiful set of picturebooks are spread across a table awaiting my attention!

Welcome to my blog

Welcome to this blog about my time in the Marantz Picturebook Collection

I was absolutely thrilled to be awarded the Sylvia and Kenneth Marantz Picturebook Collection Fellowship, and am soon winging my way across the Pacific to stay in Kent, Ohio for two weeks to look at dual language picturebooks.

To find out more about the Marantz Picturebook Collection, go to http://www.kent.edu/slis/marantz-picturebook-collection-study-picturebook-art

I will keep this blog daily while I'm there, recording interesting aspects of my work and finds as I go.

Enjoy.