The publisher One Moore Book attempts to right this wrong by publishing culturally sensitive educational stories for children with countries that have low literacy rates or are otherwise underrepresented in the literary world. In the case of their Haiti Series, books are published trilingually (in English, French and Kreyol), giving students the best chance of becoming literate in their home and school languages. For monolingual English or French speakers from other countries, the book serves as a window into life in Haiti they would otherwise not be exposed to.

The story is very simple - a girl who is learning to ride a bike and the challenges she faces along the way. A story free of stereotypes, the reader knows nothing about the socio-economic status of the girl except to know that she has a bike. It is an everyday scene that could happen in any country, but is set in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Two older role models are teaching her how to ride a bike, and while she at first has trouble with the brakes (an experience novice bike riders all over the world will share).

The copy I have was printed in the USA in 2015, is in frugal paperback and does not include a price on the back cover. If this makes the book (and books like it) more affordable in countries where it is needed I am very happy that publishers like this exist to fill this crucial need in underserved communities. If teachers in the USA and other countries didn't add this book to their classroom libraries on account of it being a paperback, I would consider this a missed opportunity. Multicultural books like this one should find their place on any bookshelf, but in particular on the bookshelves of teachers who want to celebrate their multicultural classrooms in a way that is meaningful, more than just hanging flags on the wall.

In between my parking space and the school was the Chicago History Museum. It seemed a likely place to spend a few hours, so I wandered in. Before I could even get to the ticket booth, I kept wandering into a space called Chicago Authored which seemed to be a semi-digital semi-print display space for Chicago writers. There were digital displays of old postcards penned from Chicago, right next to a free postcard display where you could be free to write and send (or display) your own hand-written post card. There were art installations of Chicago neighborhoods, showing the diversity of the city and then right in the middle of the space, there was a bookshelf with a sofa inside for reading. The bookshelf was also interactive, and you were encouraged to place your choice of Chicago books on special display shelves for "books to heal", "books that shock you", "books that give you a different perspective" and the like. There were bookmarks you could have to write your favourite quotes from the books. You would write your quote, the page number, and why you chose that quote on the bookmark, then leave it inside that book on the display. You can see what I mean scrolling through the photos below. My head was already spinning at this point. I took it all as an invitation to sit in the little sofa bookcase and read a book. 

My first choice was The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, which came with a quote bookmark that you can see photographed above. A few pages into the book however I felt compelled to look for something different. It had nothing to do with the first book, I just seemed too restless as I flipped through the pages.

That's when this book hit me in my face. The first thing I noticed was that I couldn't find a title. Or an author. Or publication details. Despite this it didn't seem too much like a self-published book - it was professionally bound with a plain hardback cloth cover, and the quality of the printing seemed too good for a DIY effort. More than anything though, this book looked like it had taken years to complete, so I couldn't understand why it was just sitting here in this non-library non-bookstore place.

Whatever reasons brought it to that place, it was clear that the book wanted to be read by me, the person who had just walked past with several hours still on my parking meter. That's what I did. I sat down and from the very first endpaper (that seemed to be an elaborate suicide note) to the very last endpaper which shows the protagonist (the author?) at various stages in her life in the same pose on her bed, I read each and every frame.

The protagonist in the book has had her leg amputated under the knee, went to art school, attended writing classes and works in a flower shop. That's about all I can tell you about it without it being a giant spoiler alert. It might seem like an odd choice to steer away from spoilers for a book that is unlikely to be read by anyone reading this blog. Even my friend who works at the school next door probably wouldn't have time to go in there before the exhibition closes, since she works full time. So even though this may have been just a book intended for me, I won't tell you the story. You might be able to work some of it out from the pictures I've included here.

This is what I will say. The book was well written - despite its annoying habit of messing with my head. The direction of the frames is not entirely obvious so I find myself trying to follow arrows or read frames in the valley of the book - deciding which half of the book claims those valley frames within the story. The thing is, the book really wants to mess with you head. It's a messy, beautiful, anguished, brutally honest book. If the book is autobiographical, there are good reasons she might want it to be anonymous. That would all make sense, except that it's too good a book to only be read by a select few.

Maybe it's a book that was submitted for publication but was too risky and didn't make it. If that's the case my heart bleeds for the author because it's so honestly full of talent and brutal soul destroying honesty. It's. just. so. good.

I have nothing more to add.

Endpapers of rough washi paper set the tone of the tone which takes place in the natural world and suggestive of natural hues and textures used throughout the book. As you can see from the example artwork on the illustrator's page, the magpie will, throughout the book, collect way too much stuff and as he does, the artwork will become much more overwhelming and oppressive through the use of messy detail and foreboding shadow. The words are deliberately kept simple - words and phrases rather than sentences to indicate the ebb and flow of the increasing and decreasing stuff on the page. This makes it a great book for young children and beginning ESL students (I don't think the pictures are too babyish for older kids), and a good conversation starter around the holidays when we all seem to accumulate too much stuff.

The author of the book is a self-proclaimed "small-house person in a McMansion-loving world", and her strong preference for simple living is evident throughout the book. The identification tag attached to the magpie's leg is a sad reminder that he or she is part of a human world and that there is literally no escape from all the stuff, but within that confine we can do certain things to arrange and curate our own belongings to get things under control and free ourselves from the nightmare that is too much stuff.

The last page (spoiler alert) shows the magpie and the mouse flying away with just a few of the most precious items wrapped up in a ribbon. This page to me is where things may get a little bit too didactic. It could be just that I have never known the true joy of being a minimalist, and my half-read copy of Marie Kondo's trending book is probably testament to the fact that I have not learned the lesson that the magpie has learned. I've moved several times and twice internationally - I get that paring down your stuff will set you free, but somehow the magpie and mouse taking flight with two little items wrapped up in a ribbon seems too easy. 

Either way - it's probably time to tidy up my place and especially my purple book cart, so this book is probably a call to a better life. 

When I got away from the register, still on the Parco escalator I ripped open the plastic to inspect my new find. Wow, wow, wow. Firstly I couldn't believe that I had just found this amazing book in English, made from what seems to be some kind of linen parchment in a Japanese department store on sale. The Disney princess books be damned - I had found a real life unicorn.

The next thing I noticed about the book is that it is filled with labyrinths of many kinds. My parents were both fans of Jean Houston's dromenon movement which used the labyrinth from the floor in Chartres Cathedral in France for personal enlightenment, and after a workshop they attended they bought matching pendants. My Dad gave his to me before he died, and it has remained my treasured possession. For a long while I believed it lost forever, but then it was inexplicably found in a pocket of a bag I was giving away when I moved to the United States. I wear it on days I want to feel close to my Dad, and when I went to France with my Mum, Chartres Cathedral was high on our list of places to visit. What, then, was it miraculously doing in a Peter Sís​ next to the Disney princesses in Parco, Nagoya?

Labyrinths of all kinds are a nice metaphor for life's journey. You walk along and think you might be getting closer, only to be jettisoned away at the last minute and sent to the other end of the maze. Keep going and you will get there. Your limited choices include a) keep going, b) stay still and c) go back which pretty much summarizes all the choices you'll ever have to make at any given time in your life. The epic poem The Conference of the Birds is also a metaphor for life's journey, as all the birds in the world join together on a quest to meet the "true king". Their journey is long and arduous through seven valleys: quest, love, understanding, detachment, unity, amazement and death.

What I like most about this book is its ability to provoke thought. Running your hands along the rough surface of each page is like tactile meditation, and the words match with the pictures perfectly. Some pages are filled to every corner with intricate detail and are overwhelming. Others make use of white space around the individual thoughts of the birds. Even though these birds move in a giant flock they are each individuals with their own characteristics and personal struggles. This is not a book for children nor is it a book for adults. Rather, this is a book for a person of any age who shares the poet's and the artist's sensibilities for metaphor. 

For me and my pendant, the labyrinth has been lost, and found, and found, and found. Every time I think I am getting further away I am suddenly there. I am there in France, or I am there on the escalators in Parco. Every time I am suddenly there I am whisked away - like the time I landed my dream job in Nagoya and then immediately had to move to the United States. However like the labyrinth I have certain choices, and I am choosing to move forward a little each day. (Welcome to my blog)

This book is the one that all children from Poland will know. The copy that I have is great in that it features the poem by Julian Tuwim (1894-1953) in three languages: the original Polish, English and German. Whether this was done to increase sales of the book in neighboring Germany (and international countries that use English) or as a learning aid so that Polish parents can expose their children to other languages, I love that this book comes in translation. Translating a work like this would have been no easy feat - quite brave really when you consider that the original poem relies so much on the rhythm and rhyme to sound like a train as it is being read. Different translations also exist and are not difficult to find - I'll leave you to Google them yourself. The story follows a locomotive, its cargo and passengers as they move along the tracks.

Did I mention? This book rocks as a read-aloud, and if you don't believe me, just listen to this video of it being read aloud. Even though I don't speak Polish at all I've listened to the whole thing three times now (and am listening again as I type this) because it sounds so awesome and locomotive-like that it gets me jiggling in my seat (Note to self: listen to this video the next time I ride a train). If I still was in contact with my young Polish ESOL student from years back, I would email him immediately and congratulate him from coming from such an awesome-sounding language background. Wow, what a read aloud!

​Now for a little about the author which I gleaned from Wikipedia and this blog. He was kind of a bad-ass in the poetry world, an inference I took from the title of one of his poems, "A Poem in which the author politely yet firmly implores the vast hosts of his brethren to kiss his arse" which was written in 1937 (by the way, don't click that link if you are easily offended by strong language, or by anything else). You can see his satirical sense of humour in this more G-rated example of his work (Lokomotywa was written the following year in 1938), on the page that describes the passengers in the third carriage of the locomotive as "fat-bellied dummies, sitting and eating greasy salamis". Although this Jewish poet wisely moved from Poland during World War Two, as soon as the war was over he moved back. I would love to know if he did any work in English during the five years he was living in New York. 

This book is a bundle of fun from the beginning to the end, the end papers appearing as one big long locomotive forging through the countryside. I believe this book would find a good place in any international school library that wants a collection that celebrates different languages and cultures as vibrant resources in a classroom. Where I live in the United States, I'm almost sure every Polish immigrant family would love to have this book, as a way of making their language really fun, and really alive for their children who may only receive their education in one language. 

I'm off to wire a large amount of money to my world-travelling friend so that she buys me a book in every country. If THIS is what she came up with, I think I need more....

These days my town has become much more multicultural due (in part) to an influx of refugees from Sudan. Not all of our white residents have been welcoming to the newcomers, but I really like to think that Australians on the whole are willing to give people at least a "fair go" - the benefit of the doubt. Others in the town, like my friend who is herself a reverse refugee of sorts (she moved back home from Fukushima in Japan after the earthquake with her two small children), work actively in the area to make sure our most vulnerable new residents are made feel welcomed in the community. I asked my friend what Christmas present she could recommend me to buy myself from my hometown, and she recommended this book.

The author, originally from Austria and an immigrant to Australia (and my hometown), wrote this book about a real-life encounter she witnessed in a local park when her daughter befriended a girl from Sudan. The story is simple - the two little girls spend time together in the park while the girl from Sudan learns English. At home, the girl curls up under her "blanket" (a metaphor for her life experiences and language). As her English language develops, she has two blankets - her old one and the new one, woven from new experiences and words as she collects them.

Two colour palettes are used deliberately throughout the book, and you can see them right on the cover above. The "old blanket" from Sudan and all things Sudanese are painted in rich red tones, warm and dark and familiar. The "new blanket" colours (everything from the new land) are fresh, cold, pale or dull blues and grays. In this way you can feel how foreign and unfamiliar the new land is to the young girl. When she makes a "new blanket" from her new experiences and knowledge, she is not replacing the "old blanket". Rather, she now has two blankets and a wealth of life experiences that she can call her own.

My hometown in Australia is probably gearing up for another summer Christmas right now. The old designs of Christmas firs and snow probably still decorate some Christmas cards, while on others Summer Santa is surfing on his surfboard while his kangaroos loll on the beach drinking a beer. Australia is finding its own identity around Christmas, but it is also finding ways to include residents for whom Christmas itself is not as familiar. Whatever your views this season, it is to be hoped that the love in your heart (the love that starts with two children in the park) is the most important thing.

Reading the book with the music, I felt almost like I was meditating rather than reading a story. I was transported back to the time when my children were small, and I watched them walk to school with their tiny umbrellas waving in the air. I was watching from the 3rd floor above the street, so this book strongly reminded me of this picture, and of the world I lived in - Japan - where children walk together in groups to school. Reading this book gave me a window into Korean culture and I imagined that children walking to school might be a common sight, even on a rainy day. It's a lovely thing that in a world where we worry about every little thing, there are still places in the world where innocence can happen on a daily basis. The simple act of children walking to school together, waving their colorful little umbrellas in the air and perhaps singing a little song - this is what Yellow Umbrella wants to show us.

I did find myself counting umbrellas and noticing colors as I read. As such, you might see this as a good book for introducing colors and numbers to little children. While I think it is that, I don't think it's a classic colour or number book. For one thing, the numbers are not linear. The music starts out "counting" with one line of music for one umbrella and two lines of music for two, but at some stage the music stops counting and starts invoking shape and other elements in the story. I wondered what this book might sound like if the theme of the music were more differentiated, and used more instruments than the piano solo. However I can understand the decision of the author to keep the same theme (based around the song printed in the back of the book) and use a solo instrument - one that is likely to be common in many kindergartens (another side note: every kindergarten teacher I've met in Japan plays piano, because there is at least one piano in every kindergarten).

For students who have never had experience of other cultures, this book is nonetheless a beautifully crated book that interacts well with the accompanying music. Whether or not it would be used as a "read aloud" in kindergartens and schools would be up to the creativity of the teacher and the available time to listen to the music. Two options are given for the music - the "read aloud" version which takes snippets from the music broken up with silence to indicate page turns (THANK YOU for not including a chintzy bell sound), and the full piece of music for each page which would take considerably longer. The song is also included, sung in Korean and translated in English with the sheet music printed. As a mother-child read aloud, I think this book is simply beautiful and would be a good choice for bedtime in order to quiet the mood. While there is very little action in this book, it is a moving depiction of childhood independence in an increasingly controlled world.

I made it to the auditorium a little later than the enthusiastic throng of people who had turned up to hear what Kwame Alexander had to say, and I was disappointed to see that I would have to carry my heavy bags up a substantial number of the unquestionably steep steps they torture people with in auditoriums. I started the climb, and my knees didn't really agree that the effort would be worth it. Not wishing to be talked out of anything by my arrogant knees, I kept going and found some rows that were more thinned out. I sat down, politely one seat away from a well dressed older man who kindly let me through.

One thing you must know about me is that I know nobody. Not a part of this children's literature world for very long and with a shocking memory for names and faces, I have no real hope on any given day of recognizing anyone important. However, I had a feeling about this impeccably dressed gentleman. He had a quiet way that both commanded respect but reminded me of my own father who might sit with me and read me a book when I was young. I wondered who he was, because he seemed rather remarkable.

The presentation commenced and the audience were immediately all asked to participate. I love, love, love interactive presentations like this on a normal day. However the invitation to interact with the unknown yet intriguing well-dressed gentleman next to me sounded like an enchanting adventure (no matter who he turned out to be) so I smiled inwardly to hear our first task, to share with the person next to us how we became a reader. 

How did you become a reader? It's a story that we should think about more often. Our own perceptions of ourselves as readers, as writers and as consumers of words is so important to how we will interact with others in the world. Dogs and chickens and dolphins and unicorns have their own ways to interact with each other I suppose, but humans have words. We communicate with each other, choosing our words from the shelves and the catalogues that we have built, and largely we have added to our collection through reading.

When I headed to the restaurant this morning, I thought about that man again, and about Kwame Alexander (whose book I had with me) and about knowing ourselves as readers, and our own unique story. I also thought of my father who was my no means a world-famous educator or writer, but had been my whole world growing up. He had his own story about how he became a reader too, but now it's too late to ask what that was. He was a remedial teacher, a label with which he had a complicated relationship. He loved being a teacher and seeing the spark of cognition in a student, but didn't like the labels that get put on students: "remedial student", "slow learner", "not really a reader". This was my takeaway from the panel discussion, that we need to be so careful about the language we use around our young readers, because everyone's story as a reader is still being written.

I know I haven't talked very directly about this book yet. The official publication date isn't until April 5th, 2016. Let me just say this. This book is for you if you:

* Have kids or teenagers in your family
* Were (or are) a teenager in your family
* Consider yourself a reader
* Consider yourself a non-reader

If you can check any one of the above boxes, I believe that you will love this book. As for me, I can check all of those boxes at once, so this is the book that is making me weep - in a good way - today.

A similar fate seems to have befallen other indigenous languages in the world. Many indigenous languages (for example the Ainu and Ryukyuan languages in Japan) are endangered and yet don't get a mention. In Japan, popular political discourse would have you believe that Japan is a monolingual and monocultural nation, and reading this book does not challenge that notion even on the pages of languages like Korean, Portuguese, and Chinese that have significant ethnic populations in Japan.

Speaking of the Japanese page, I found the treatment of the hiragana alphabet up the side of the page (to the exclusion of katakana) and the brief description of the three scripts (hiragana, katakana and kanji) being used without giving an example makes it difficult to see how written Japanese might look on the page. Every language page gives examples of how to say certain short phrases, but I would have liked to have seen real examples of language - a school notebook excerpt, or street signs, or something to show how certain languages look in the real world.

I certainly like that this kind of book exists - it shows at the very least that there is a diversity of languages in the world. However I feel that this kind of book is a chance to show language, not just just a useful code we apply to our communications with other people, but also as a tool of cultural power and status in the world. Much attention was given to making this book extremely broad and all-encompassing (having said that the index has errors in editing - just check New Zealand and Australia if you want to see what I mean). However, in doing that certain decisions were made to only mention the most widely spoken languages, which sadly does not reflect how languages ebb and sway in the world. Families are bilingual and multilingual - parents struggle to keep their own cultures alive through language, and I think children can take a discussion of this nature through books like these. While students may be motivated to take this book and learn to say "Hello" in 48 different languages, my hope for a book like this is that students will look around them, and notice that these languages (and many others) are all around them, the best hope for ethnic groups to keep their cultures alive within their families.