The Kickstarter campaign succeeded. Thank you for supporting the creation of my first trilingual Chinese picture book.
Which Chicken and Duck Talk: Learning to Swim is the first book in my trilingual Chinese picture book series. I wrote it to show the similarities and differences between Cantonese and Mandarin. I also wanted multilingual children and families to know they didn’t need to choose one language over the other. Both Chinese languages are important.
I have been writing 8-page little Chinese readers for students in my classroom. Students thrive when they aren’t overwhelmed. My picture book uses that same concept.
The upper half of each page is written without romanization. Readers can choose to read the book in any Chinese language they know. Readers who speak Taishanese or Taiwanese can read it in their own language.
Readers can also choose to follow the color-coded page and speech bubbles to read the text in Cantonese (in blue) and Mandarin (in orange) with the help of Jyutping and Pinyin.
The book includes Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciation guides, extra vocabulary, and tips and games for learning Chinese.
The world is multilingual. Make sure your books are multilingual too. Sign up to be notified when you can order When Chicken and Duck Talk: Learning to Swim.
At the moment, teachers and librarians can win a copy of the book to use in their classroom or library. https://bit.ly/chickenandduck
