If You Give a Kid a Translated Book
If you give a kid a translated book, they’re going to ask what “translated” means. That’s a big question. “Translated means retelling something in a way others might understand better than the first time around,” you might tell them, as they’re flipping past the title page that says something like “translated from Spanish.”
When you tell them this short and simple explanation, they’re going to ask how it was told the first time around. You’ll tell them that it was originally written in a language that you might not know, so the translator was able to tell the same story in the language you do understand.
When you tell them that they do understand what they’re about to read, they’ll become determined to read the book all the way through by themselves to make sure that you were telling the truth.
When they start to read the book, they’re going to have some questions for you. “Wait a minute,” they might ask you. “What’s Chile? And what does it mean that the children were lost?” They’d be looking at the book Niños: Poems for the Lost Children of Chile. You would start to explain how Chile is a country in South America and that last century there was a dictatorship. Children disappeared during that dictatorship, and this book tells their story.
When you tell the kid that this translated book shares the story about these lost children, they’ll become curious and want to read other stories about parts of the world they’ve never heard about before. You’ll let them read How War Changed Rondo to talk about the war in Ukraine.
And you’ll let them read When Spring Comes to the DMZ, where they’ll learn all about the wildlife in the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea. You’ll have conversations with the child about each of the books, especially the story of the Holocaust as told from a dog’s perspective in The Story of Bodri.
When a child reads all these books that touch on war and conflict in other parts of the world, they’ll ask if you have any translated books that teach them about those other parts of the world…but maybe in a less sad and more joyful way.
This is when you would pull Summer Moonlight Concert off of your bookshelf, read it out loud, and ask them if they would like to hear how Xiaomi and her neighbours’ music sounds. You’ll share a recording of an erhu.
When they listen to the sound of the erhu, they’ll think about how there are different instruments throughout the world, and they’ll become curious about other customs in different countries. You’ll open up the book I am the Subway to teach about the kinds of people you might see if you were riding the Seoul subway. You’ll also talk about how different languages are spoken in different parts of the world, which you’ll present by reading the book The Day Saida Arrived.
When you talk about all the differences between cultures, the kid will look at you and ask if there’s anything the same from culture to culture. They’ll ask, “do we just read translated books to learn about how things are different?” “Sometimes,” you’ll say. “But a lot of the time, translated books can be really relatable! We get to learn about how we can have very similar experiences, even if we live oceans apart.”
For example, you’ll present them with Cardinal Media’s Hopeful Picture Books series and say “everybody was affected by the pandemic!” They’ll find it amusing to get to know the character of the talking mask in The Mask That Loved to Count. "And, no matter where you live, you’ll always have to, unfortunately, watch people grow old and pass away,” you’ll convey, as you read about dementia in Coffee Rabbit Snowdrop Lost and grief in One Day.
When the kid reads all about these relatable experiences, they’ll ask you if you have any translated books on your bookshelf that might just be less serious and more whimsical. You’ll smile as you share with them some of the most magical, fantastical, lovely stories you’ve ever read. “These books,” you’ll say, “are the ‘Sato the Rabbit’ books! There are three of them, all about a little boy who turns into a rabbit and sees everyday life as opportunities for incredible adventures.” One by one, you’ll read Sato the Rabbit, Sato the Rabbit: The Moon, and Sato the Rabbit: A Sea of Tea.
When the kid finishes the 'Sato the Rabbit' series, they’ll ask for another series that was just as fun as this one. You would find Chirri & Chirra: The Rainy Day on your bookshelf, read it and say that this is part of another series, and you’ll have to go to the bookstore tomorrow and pick up the other books in the series. The child will dreamily think about 'Café Umbrella' from the book and imagine themselves in a world where rain falls upside down.
When their imagination runs wild and they start to go into dreamland, they’ll become tired. “It’s bedtime,” you’ll say. “We can go to the bookstore or library tomorrow and read more!” But the kid would want a bedtime story before their shut-eye time. You would know the perfect book to read: Telephone Tales. You will flip to a random page and read one of the 70 bedtime stories, as told over the phone by the Italian narrator Signor Bianchi to his daughter.
When the kid falls asleep, they’ll have stories running through their dreams: stories about other cultures, stories about how they can experience the same exact feelings that children on the other side of the globe feel, stories about rabbits and rain and telephones. They’ll hardly wait until the next day when they can read even more translated books.
Catherine Hurwitz (July 2022)
